250g Flapping Robot Swims, Then Flies Without Paddling
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- The 250-gram flapping-wing robot transitions from underwater swimming to aerial flight using the same wings, with no paddling mechanism required for propulsion.
- MIT News, NPR, and Tech Xplore all frame the design as bio-inspired, with MIT News specifically comparing the robot's seamless water-to-air transition to a diving bird's natural movement.
Why it matters: A single set of flapping wings handling both aquatic and aerial propulsion could collapse the hardware complexity of dual-domain robots, replacing the multi-mechanism designs that currently limit amphibious drones. The diving-bird mimicry — noted across coverage — points to nature-derived engineering rather than added thrusters or propellers.
