Bats have long captured the imaginations of scientists and engineers with their unrivaled agility, but their complex wing motions pose significant technological challenges for those seeking to recreate their flight in a robot. The key flight mechanisms of bats now have been recreated with unprecedented fidelity in the Bat Bot—a self-contained robotic bat with soft, articulated wings, developed by researchers at Caltech and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Arguably, bats have the most sophisticated powered flight mechanism among animals, which includes wings that have the capability of changing shape. Conventional lightweight fabrics, like nylon and Mylar, are not stretchable enough. Instead, the researchers developed a custom ultra-thin (56 microns), silicone-based membrane that simulates stretchable, thin bat wings.