Among the new-fangled contraptions on display at the recent Design Show in Chicago was a model airplane that mimics a bird’s flapping wings, and a device that its creator claims will make automobiles ...

The Canadian team behind the first sustained flight of an ornithopter flapping wings-powered aircraft believes the prospect of a manned craft is now real, despite video evidence showing the ...

A drone prototype that mimics the aerobatic manoeuvres of one of the world's fastest birds, the swift, is being developed by an international team of engineers in the latest example of biologically ...

Quadcopters? Please, those are so 2012. This ultralight ornithopter uses four flapping wings to get off the ground. The best part? Most of it can be fabricated using consumer 3-D printers. The ...

Humanity spent centuries trying to fly like birds with flapping wings before finally developing the technologies needed to soar with balloons and then taking to the air with gas-powered, fixed-wing ...

Flapping-wing ornithopter drones may potentially be more agile and energy-efficient than their fixed-wing counterparts, but most of them still can't loiter in one spot. A new model addresses that ...

One of humankind’s dreams has always been to fly like a bird. For a hacker, an achievable step along the path to that dream is to make an ornithopter — a machine which flies by flapping its wings. An ...

THE aeroplane looks as fragile as a matchstick model. Its aluminium frame shows through its thin, fabric skin, and the engine compartment is protected only by a cloth square stuck on with a few bits ...

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 ...