Current flying objects face a trade-off: Drones with propellers, for instance, are very agile and able to hover; however, they use up a lot of energy. Airplanes, on the other hand, feature fixed wings ...

Flapping-wing robots that mimic the flight mechanics of birds and insects are closing the control gap with conventional quadrotor drones, according to a cluster of recent peer-reviewed studies.

A lightweight robot modeled on diving birds can swim underwater, break through the surface, and continue flying without using feet or propellers. The feat exposes a difficult mechanical compromise ...

Tübingen, Germany – Current flying objects face a trade-off: Drones with propellers for instance are very agile and able to hover, however they use up a lot of energy. Airplanes on the other hand ...

Researchers say the $300 robot marks the first bird-scale machine to complete an air-to-water-to-air cycle using flapping wings alone. Watching a diving bird vanish beneath the water can feel almost ...

Loons, gulls, puffins, and petrels are some of the 100 species of birds that can both fly and swim. These diving birds can plunge in water to swim after prey, and leap back into the air to fly away.

Researchers have developed a new kind of robot. It can't write our theme music. Only BJ Leiderman does that. But it can swim, run and even, one day, it might clean our coastlines. NPR's Ari Daniel met ...