Airbus created the AlbatrossONE, a small-scale remote-controlled aircraft with wingtips that can flap like a bird during turbulence to better handle the strong gusts of winds. These hinged, flapping ...

Bio-inspired wind sensing using strain sensors on flexible wings could revolutionize robotic flight control strategy. Researchers have developed a method to detect wind direction with 99% accuracy ...

No matter how good our human designs may be, evolution has had a 4-billion-year head start, so there’s no shame in copying off Mother Nature’s homework. Engineers at the University of Bristol have ...

As we’re starting to get used to the idea of unmanned drones dropping deliveries on a regular basis, scientists are already working on changing them. How about watching a drone flap its wings on its ...

Four flapping-wing drones developed by a research team at the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB), which feature eagle, pigeon, butterfly and beetle imitations, have recently gained ...

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, ...

Some insects can flap their wings so rapidly that it’s impossible for instructions from their brains to entirely control the behaviour. Building tiny flapping robots has helped researchers shed light ...

We have developed four-winged bird-like robots, called ornithopters, that can take off and fly with the agility of swifts, hummingbirds and insects. We did this by reverse engineering the aerodynamics ...