France's military is exploring bird-mimicking, flapping-wing drones (BIOFLY project) to enhance stealth, camouflage, and confuse adversaries in military applications. The BIOFLY drone, weighing about ...

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 ...

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 ...

Using robotic and animal models, researchers have shown that some dinosaurs were already flapping their rudimentary wings as a side effect of running, prior to evolving the ability to fly. The finding ...

In this undated photo provided by Facundo Vital in July 2020, an Andean condor soars above the Patagonian steppe in Argentina. To birds, the sky is not empty, but a landscape of invisible features – ...

LATER this year a team led by Adrian Thomas, a professor of biomechanics at the University of Oxford’s Department of Zoology, will try to break the human-powered water speed record. The aim is to ...

A new study into the flight characteristics of condors — the largest soaring birds on Earth — finds that they rarely flap their wings once airborne. Condors are capable of flying for over a hundred ...

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 Andean condor ...