It's a bird, it's a plane … it's a robo-puffin?

MIT engineers' design for a robot that both swims and flies could lead to a new class of vehicles for ocean exploration. Given that water is 1,000 times denser than air, moving through those two mediums requires very different mechanics--or so one might assume. Yet birds like gulls and puffins can plunge into the sea, swim underwater, and leap back into the air to fly away. And now engineers at MIT and EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have designed a robot that can do likewise. The "flapping-wing aerial-aquatic vehicle," or FAAV, weighs less than 300 grams (about half a pound) and is equipped with a central fuselage, two flexible wings, and a steerable tail. The body contains a battery and a waterproof electric motor that drives a crankshaft, which pumps the wings up and down at preset frequencies.