Daily Archives: December 6, 2012

Robobees: The Future of Micro Air Vehicles

At Harvard’s SEAS laboratory, Professor Robert Wood and his colleagues are making vast advances in the field of micro air vehicles. Their latest project, the Robobee, seeks to incorporate bio-inspired design with a state-of-the-art navigation system that allows for autonomous flight and coordinated work with other Robobees. Their team, which includes evolutionary biologists, engineers and […]

Hummingbird Hovering and the Aerodynamics of Wing Vortices

Of all the known species of birds, the hummingbird is perhaps one of the most iconic because of its unique ability to hover. The hummingbird has a number of adaptions that allow it to fly with breathtaking agility and precision. A new technique using stroboscopic laser sheets allowed scientists to see how air flows over […]

How Hummingbirds Hover

Mastering the art of flying was a huge feat for the human race, and an amazing accomplishment. It took intuition and engineering to interpret the methods by which flying animals engage in flight and put them together into mechanisms that allow humans to travel through the air for extended periods of time. After the first […]