ABOVE: The robot (DelFly Nimble) in forward flight
HENRI WERIJ, TU DELFT (CC BY-SA 4.0)
An insect-inspired robot with flapping wings is helping researchers study the wide range of flight maneuvers used by insects such as fruit flies, according to a study published yesterday (September 13) in Science. By programming the four-winged robot, the researchers could direct its execution of banked turns, rolls, and flips that insects perform while evading predators.
M. Karásek et al., “A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns,” Science, doi:10.1126/science.aat0350, 2018.
