(Credit: ©EPFL/Laboratory of Intelligent Systems) Drones, in the sense of remote controlled flying vehicles, are pretty neat pieces of technology. Even just the various models available for consumers can covertly provide surveillance, offer novel rescue and transportation options and even create high-thrills entertainment. But as the technology advanced there was one balancing act engineers began to face: The smaller and more maneuverable a drone became, the less it could affect its surroundings. Tiny, lightweight flyers can’t drag around heavy weights, say, or open doors. Well, they couldn’t, at least. But a paper out today in Science Robotics describes a new type of drone that can do just that, by borrowing technology from another famous flyer: the wasp.
The team of Standford and Swiss engineers describe a new class of micro air vehicles they dubbed FlyCroTugs (named after mTug robots, which are ground-based machines that work on similar principles.) To get ...
