Weight riddle solved by Stanford bird wing test

A new instrument may help to carry out tests to optimize miniature drones, in attempts to assess their flight performance more precisely. A team from Stanford University have shown how flapping wings enable flying animals and biomimetic robots to generate elevated aerodynamic forces. Animals with flapping wings range from insects and bats to birds and the latter have complex wing motions, such that the ways in which they are able to generate aerodynamic force are not fully understood. The team h...