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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...