The next time you look up at the sky, you could see machines with wings that fly like bats.

By studying the movement and structure of the wings of fruit bats, researchers learned the wings may be the key to designing small robots that can fly, the Science Recorder reported. The findings, developed by scientists at Virginia Tech, were published in the journal Physics of Fluids.

Researchers found that bats can alter how their wings move in order to increase the force of their wings while flapping. The mammal has the ability to increase its wing area by 30 percent to make conditions more favorable when flying down. Fruit bats can do the same when flying up.

"[The fruit bat] distorts its wing shape and size continuously during flapping," said Danesh Tafti, a Virginia Tech professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, according to the Science Recorder.

The force produced by the wings are "about two to three times greater than a static airfoil wing used for large airplanes," Kamal Viswanath, who worked with Tafti and co-authored the study, said according to the Science Recorder.

Viswanath and his colleagues concluded that the bat's impressive ability to control the force of its wings could open doors for creating miniature flying vehicles.   

"Next, we'd like to explore deconstructing the seemingly complex motion of the bat wing into simpler motions, which is necessary to make a bat-inspired flying robot," Viswanath said, the Science Recorder reported.

With over 1,000 species, Bats are both an evolutionary goldmine and mystery for scientists.  

"Bats have different wing shapes and sizes, depending on their evolutionary function," Tafti said, according to the Science Recorder. "Typically, bats are very agile and can change their flight path very quickly- showing high maneuverability for midflight prey capture, so it's of interest to know how they do this."