
Bat Bot, the Flying First Robot Bat - andreshb
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/robots/a25002/behold-bat-bot/
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jayjay71
Neat. I wonder how much work it will take before it can hover. I just spent
too much time on YouTube watching people crash drones (often into people). I
could see some applications for this filming at crowded venues once it's more
developed.

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andrewflnr
Putting a camera on any flapping-wing platform is going to require a heck of a
lot of image stabilization, to say the least. You would probably have to put
the camera on a neck like a heron's.

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jayjay71
I thought about that shortly after posting my comment. I could still see it
being used by consumers for low quality videos, or maybe for medium quality
depending on how much can be salvaged from software stabilization. But then
just thinking about the weight alone for decent cameras and how much more they
weigh than this entire platform!

I see it mostly as a cool research project right now. Like most research
projects it will likely never see mass commercialization, but it's still
really cool. And maybe something they learn from this will be useful for
something else entirely.

I also actually know one of the professors who worked on this, as he taught my
first programming course way back when. He just loves to build cool robots.

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andrewflnr
Oh yeah, I'm not saying the project is anything short of awesome!

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gellman
This reminds me of the first robot bird
[http://ed.ted.com/on/xtyd4M5V](http://ed.ted.com/on/xtyd4M5V) that was built
a few years ago. I would be interested in knowing how difficult it is to build
a robot bat once you already know how to build a robot bird. Is there any
specific challenge in emulating the way bats fly compared to birds?

