If you’ve ever watched a flapping insect or hummingbird hover in place – often while engaged in other activities such as ...

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 ...

A simulation study was initiated to investigate alternative wing and flap controls for tilt-wing aircraft. The initial phase of the study compared the flying qualities of both a conventional ...

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 ...

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 ...

Jerry Seinfeld launched his career with Bee Movie, an insect-themed animated feature that took the world by storm in 2007. It posed the quandary – that supposedly, according to all known laws of ...

Since the dawn of aviation, birds have been an inspiration for visionaries of flight. And now, engineers are once again looking to feathered friends to inspire the next generation of aircraft wings.

At this point, building a flying vehicle isn’t terribly hard. Aviation enthusiasts can buy DIY kits and build themselves a plane that can easily and safely take to the skies. But a flying vehicle that ...

Zabdiel Avives flew across New York, gliding over and around buildings on the landscape — but the 12-year-old boy only had to travel about a dozen miles from his Maywood home for the experience. He ...

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 ...