A new drone has the ability to change its wings to better fit the situation, causing many to compare the new invention to the likes of Batman, according to the Guardian.
Engineers from the University of Southampton and the Imperial College London have developed a new Micro Air Vehicle, or MAV, capable of mimicking actual bat wings - changing shape in response to external forces.
The wings are made of an "electroactive" material that actually changes its shape when an electric current is passed through it, similar to Batman's cape in "The Dark Knight."
The prototype has passed extensive wind tunnel trials, according to the Daily Mail.
"We've successfully demonstrated the fundamental feasibility of MAVs incorporating wings that respond to their environment, just like those of the bats that have fueled our thinking," said Southampton University's professor Bharath Ganapathisubramani. "We've also shown in laboratory trials that active wings can dramatically alter the performance."
Developers are looking to tweak the design and possibly integrate the "active wings" into other drone projects with applications for the military as well as surveillance and rescue missions.
"Instead of a traditional approach of scaling down existing aircraft design methods, we constantly change the membrane shape under varying wind conditions to optimize its aerodynamic performance," said Rafael Palacios with the Imperial's Department of Aeronautics.
The data has been published with Aerospace Research Central, according to Phys.org.
