‘PigeonBot’ Brings Robots Closer To Birdlike Flight

via NPR

For decades, scientists have been trying to create machines that mimic the way birds fly. A team from Stanford University has gotten one big step closer.

The team created the PigeonBot — a winged robot that it says approximates the graceful complexities of bird flight better than any other robot to date.

When a bird is soaring through the air, it dramatically changes the shape of its wings as it makes hairpin turns and swoops up and down. Birds change the shape of their wings far more than planes do, and the complexities of bird flight have posed a major design challenge for scientists trying to translate the way birds fly into robots.

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