The world's first successful flight of a self-powered, rudderless, flapping aircraft has been achieved by engineers from AeroVironment. The NAV, or nano air vehicle, operates by using two flapping ...

Insects are thought to use specific chest muscles to actively open and close their wings. However, high-speed imaging reveals that rhinoceros beetles flap their hindwings to deploy them for flight, ...

SmartBird is an ornithopter drone, inspired by the herring gull. Built by German automation firm Festo, it can fly, glide, take off and land using only its wings driven by on-board power. The drone’s ...

The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results. The flapping wings ...

Bio-inspired wind sensing using strain sensors on flexible wings could revolutionize robotic flight control strategy. Researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo have developed a method to detect wind ...

There are no powered spinning propellers in nature. When evolution has found an advantage to producing thrust in a fluid, it has done it mainly by flapping things back and forth. This new VTOL ...

Jerry Seinfeld launched his career with Bee Movie, an insect-themed animated feature that took the world by storm in 2007. It posed the quandary – that supposedly, according to all known laws of ...

UK biomimetic engineering startup Animal Dynamics is building a microdrone with wings inspired by the flapping flight of a dragonfly. The project, which started in June 2015 with a feasibility study, ...

Imagine insect-like aircraft capable of military or civilian surveillance missions, impossible for current fixed-wing or rotary-wing vehicles – tiny flying machines able to access buildings reduced to ...

Over half a millennium ago, Leonardo da Vinci sketched the first human-powered ornithopter. For centuries since, engineers have attempted to build a human-powered aircraft with flapping wings. Now, a ...