Hovering robots could get more lift by ‘treading water’ in the air

Moving like an insect may not be the most efficient way for tiny flying robots to hover – they get more lift by taking advantage of vortices of air that form under their wings

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Small robots could get more lift when they hover by moving their wings in a “treading water” motion instead of flapping them like hovering insects do.

In an experiment with a robotic wing, Swathi Krishna at the University of Southampton in the UK and Karen Mulleners at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, found that flying micro-robots could hover up to 50 per cent more efficiently if they used a wing …