Carried by the wind, dandelion seeds can travel enormous distances of more than a kilometer (0.6 miles). Now, researchers at The University of Edinburgh have discovered that this is thanks to a remarkable form of flight never before seen in nature.
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For 13 years now, a Dutch research team has been building autonomous flying robots inspired by the humble fruit fly. Now, with the DelFly Nimble, they've achieved their closest mimic yet, with an incredibly agile fly-bot capable of multi-axis hovering and even turning flips.
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A Singaporean company is resurrecting a post-WW2 German design to commercialize a beautiful reverse-delta ground effect vehicle as a high-speed, high-efficiency ferry for 6-8 passengers. The Airfish 8 hovers serenely between 2 and 23 feet over the water and hits speeds of almost 120 mph.
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Airbus' Perlan 2 glider is continuing to push the limits of engineless flight, hitting a succession of record altitudes throughout the last week, culminating in a unprecedented 76,000-ft (23,000-m) climb on Sunday.
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A lot has been made of the dangers of drones mixing with other aircraft, but one team of engineers is exploring how they can guard planes from threats rather than present new ones by developing drones that can shepherd birds away from flight paths like robotic aerial sheepdogs.
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Airbus' Zephyr program has claimed another record, with a production model unmanned solar-powered aircraft touching down after more than 25 days in the air. That voyage is the longest unmanned flight ever made, and was achieved on this particular vehicle's maiden voyage, no less.
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NASA has tested three new noise reduction technologies on a series of Acoustic Research Measurement (ARM) flights, and managed to cut airframe noise during landing by more than 70 percent.
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Quadcopters are most stable with their four propellers arranged in a square configuration, with one prop at each corner of the square. Such a setup makes it difficult for the aircraft to fit through tight spaces, however. That's where the Quad-Morphing drone comes in.
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Autonomous aerial vehicles known as High Altitude Pseudo Satellites (HAPS) can soar at the edges of space for long periods of time. Now, UAVOS has conducted test flights of its ApusDuo prototype, an autonomous, solar-powered aircraft with flexible wings that bend and bounce to keep it aloft.
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You might remember RoboBee, an insect-sized robot that flies by flapping its wings. Unfortunately, though, it has to be hard-wired to a power source. Well, one of RoboBee's creators has now helped develop RoboFly, which flies without a tether.
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