Dutch engineering students have made miniature airplanes with shape-changing wings modeled on the wings of swifts -- tiny, extraordinarily agile birds with a proclivity for jaw-dropping loop-de-loops and barrel rolls.
Swift expert David Lehtink estimates that the birds fly a distance equivalent to five earth-to-moon round trips during their lifetimes. Consequently, they've developed wings capable of morphing into the most efficient shape for the moment's flight conditions.
Lehtink's students did the same thing with the RoboSwift, a three-ounce, 20-inch-wingspan craft that can change wing shape "from fully extended to fully swept back."
Depressingly, the BBC -- apparently unable to let someone design an insanely cool flying machine without wondering if it could be used in warfare -- frames the RoboSwift as an improvement on flex-wing fighter jets. But perhaps the students have something else in mind: their
RoboSwifts are equipped with wing-mounted video cameras through which a human controller on the ground "sees."
It's not a far jump from this to flying virtually with the birds....
Swifts inspire morphing-wing plane [Swifts Inspire Morphing-Wing Plane]
Image: RoboSwift*
