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 ...

Tiny flying robots have always faced a brutal trade-off between agility and battery life, burning through power just to stay ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Archaeopteryx was a flapper, not just a glider. The shape of the ancient bird’s wing bones suggests it was capable of short bursts of active, flapping flight, similar to how modern birds like ...

Ever seen a bat gobble up a bug, or a fly evade a swatting hand? Even the most agile fighter pilot can’t match those aerial acrobatics. Now a team of Dutch researchers has built a flying robot that ...

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 ...