Flight

The LEO Solo just went up for preorder, pitched as an FAA Part 103-friendly (no pilot license required), single-seat personal eVTOL. It's supposedly landing in late 2025.

DARPA's X-65, that replaces conventional aircraft flight controls with puffs of air, is coming together at Boeing subsidiary Aurora’s Bridgeport, West Virginia facility. The fuselage is taking shape and awaits its radical wing design.

While most planes use heat to melt ice that can form on the wing either before takeoff or during flight, the process is highly energy intensive and can impact engine efficiency. A new process from German researchers shakes the ice off instead.

"You can either go to Vegas, or you can go to The Hacienda," is what got this world-record-setting idea off the ground and into the air for a couple of months. Yep, I said months.

Drones are already very useful, but they could be even more so if they could land on vehicles without requiring those vehicles to slow down for them. A new system makes that possible, allowing for on-truck landings at speeds of 110 km/h (68 mph).

Despite the fact that they bang their heads against trees on a daily basis, woodpeckers don't suffer brain injuries. Inspired by the tough-headed birds, scientists have developed a fixed-wing drone that can survive frontal collisions.

Although we keep hearing about eVTOLs, barriers such as high prices and regulatory approval may limit their widespread use. That shouldn't be a problem for the AirKart, as it could be rented and flown by anyone at dedicated closed-course race tracks.

More than 20 years after the last commercial Concorde flight, President Trump has signed an executive order to repeal the ban on supersonic flight over land across the US. That paves the way for companies building the ultra-fast planes of the future.

Imagine a robot that can transform between "flying drone" and "wheeled rover" configurations. It could be quite useful, but only if it works in real-world conditions. The ATMO bot was designed to do just that, by transforming in mid-air.

Even the nimblest of quadcopters still struggle to halt their lateral momentum when moving fast, limiting their maneuverability. An experimental drone addresses that problem in a bio-inspired fashion, by extending flying-squirrel-like membranous wings as needed.

Even if you've built one of the world's best insect-inspired micro air vehicles, it won't be that useful if it can't stick a landing. That's why Harvard scientists have now given their RoboBee a set of long, jointed legs like those of the crane fly.

Scientists have created what they say is the world's smallest untethered flying robot, by taking a unique approach to its design. To minimize size and weight, they've moved the bot's power and control systems out of its sub-centimeter-wide body.