Novel flying robot mimics rapid insect flight

A novel insect-inspired flying robot, developed by TU Delft researchers from the Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab), is presented in Science (14 September 2018). Experiments with this first autonomous, free-flying and agile flapping-wing robot improves the understanding of how fruit flies control aggressive escape manoeuvres. This enables small natural flyers such as insects to hover close to a flower, but also to escape danger rapidly. Animal flight has always drawn the attention of biologists, who not only study their complex wing motion patterns and aerodynamics, but also their sensory and neuro-motor systems during such agile manoeuvres. Recently, flying animals have also become a source of inspiration for robotics researchers, who try to develop lightweight flying robots that are agile, power-efficient and even scalable to insect sizes.