Bat-Inspired Gripper Lets Drones Perch Like Birds and Switch Off Their Motors

A bat hanging from a cave ceiling is doing something that looks effortless but is, mechanically speaking, genuinely strange. It isn’t gripping. Not actively, anyway. When a bat lands inverted, its body weight pulls down on tendons running through the legs, and those tendons tighten the toes around whatever surface the animal has landed on. No muscle contraction required, no energy expenditure beyond the initial grab. The bat can sleep for hours, or days, its hold only strengthening under its...