Researchers Create Micro-Flyer That "Swims" in Air

Lief Ristroph and Stephen Childress of New York University have taken an alternate route around evolution's highway: They've created a miniature flying machine that moves not like a bird or insect, but a jellyfish. Rather than flapping its four wings up and down, this micro-ornithopter's wings use a swimming motion, opening and closing its wings in order to ascend, descend, and hover. Flying machines that mimic the flight of animals like bees or hummingbirds tend to flip upside-down, unless the ...