Tiny drones could one day crawl through collapsed buildings to help find survivors after earthquakes. These micro-robots, inspired by insects, now show flight skills close to the real thing.

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

Birds fly more efficiently by folding their wings during the upstroke, according to a recent study. The results could mean that wing-folding is the next step in increasing the propulsive and ...

The study of bio-inspired flapping flight and the dynamics of micro air vehicles (MAVs) has grown into a vibrant interdisciplinary field, merging insights from insect biomechanics, aerodynamics and ...

An insect-scale robot from MIT performs agile flight maneuvers using a neural-network controller, surpassing previous ...

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a micro-flapping-wing robot that exhibits flight characteristics and speeds similar to those of a bee. An AI-based, ...

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 ...

Robotics researchers regularly turn to the natural world for inspiration, and those working on machines that fly are no different. An international team of scientists has taken this approach to ...