Tagged: bio-inspired engineering

Nano Hummingbird

A team of engineers led by Matt Keennon at California-based aerovironment developed the Nano hummingbird for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Nano hummingbird is composed of four components; low-res camera, 6.5 inch wings, transmission and plastic shell. It is designed to mimic the flight of a hummingbird. It can fly up to 17.7 […]

Winged Robotic Cockroach Informs Debate on Evolution of Flight

Professor Ronald Fearing and his research team at the University of California, Berkeley, originally intended to create a robot that could navigate all types of terrain. When their first robot DASH, short for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, fell slightly short of their objective, they decided to attach wings to the robotic cockroach. Only later did […]

The Next Generation of UAV

A group of researchers from several American universities have begun a projet to develop a small unmanned aerial vehicle capable of flying like a bird. Lead by Professor Russ Tedrake of MIT they will attempt to build a UAV capable of navigating natural and urban environments at high speeds, much like small birds do. In their initial […]

Robotic Flies

While humans have been trying to build larger and larger flying machines that can carry more and more people and cargo, even more challenging has been the task of creating very small machines that can be controlled remotely and can fly in tight spaces. In the past few years, Robert Wood and his team at […]

Finding the Right Tailwind

After watching the above video, you may be astounded by the way the gecko lands on it feet much like a cat does. Many animals have self-correcting mechanisms for falls, but most work differently and it takes research to figure out the different ways for different species. Cats do it by twisting their body to […]

Obstacle avoidance in flying robots

Researchers at Harvard and MIT have been hard at work trying to understand the mechanics of in flight collision avoidance in birds. the goal of this project is to develop small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that can navigate a forest or urban setting without crashing into trees or buildings, while still being able to fly relatively […]

Welcome to Bio-Aerial Locomotion

This is the blog of the engineering freshman seminar course titled “Bio-Aerial Locomotion”, taught by Prof. Lorena Barba at Boston University. This course is one of several options of the Introduction to Engineering series (EK 131/132) at the College of Engineering. The course aims to motivate the subject of bio-inspired engineering, characterized by seeking examples […]