Name: BionicFlyingFox
Brand: Festo Bionic Learning Network (Germany)

Festo Bionic Learning Network (Germany) BionicFlyingFox (1)

Not for saleResearch demonstrator, unveiled by Festo in spring 2018.

Not for sale (research)Not programmableRobotic bat228 cm wingspan580 gMachine learning

Not for saleShipping: Not for sale. Never sold.

Remote control: Not possible. A human pilot handles take-off and landing, and Festo's motion-tracking system acts as autopilot in flight.

Festo ↗IEEE Spectrum ↗Motion Control (2019) ↗

Overview

A large robotic bat that flies semi-autonomously inside a defined airspace. Like a real flying fox, its wing is split into arm and hand sections covered by a thin elastic membrane, and it steers by moving its legs to change the wing area. A camera-based tracking system and a host computer guide it and improve its flight paths lap by lap through machine learning. It sits in Festo's flying series between SmartBird and BionicSwift.

Specifications

Category	Flapping-wing fliers · Flapping-wing robots
Released	2018
Country	Germany
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Programmability	No programmability
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Brushless / direct-drive motors
Audio	No audio
Compute type	Proprietary / undisclosed, Laptop / PC as the brain
Remote control	Not programmable
Size	228 cm wingspan, 87 cm body length, 580 g
Locomotion	Flapping bat wings with an elastic membrane (two airtight films welded to elastane knit at about 45,000 points), driven by a 9 g brushless motor through a gearbox, with separate motors adjusting each wing
Compute	On-board electronics compute the wing movements, while a central host computer plans trajectories and learns and refines the control algorithms
Camera	None on board (two ground infrared cameras on a pan-tilt unit follow it)
Sensors	4 active infrared markers on the legs and wing tips for external motion tracking
Runtime	Not published
Speed	Not published
SDK	None public