Given their impressive flight capabilities, it’s not surprising to see researchers turning to the world of flying insects for inspiration when developing new kinds of micro UAVs. With their ability to both fly at high speeds and hover, the dragonfly would seem an obvious candidate for biomimicry, but we hadn’t seen any attempts to model a micro UAV on the dragonfly’s four wing design – until now. A multi-disciplinary team from Georgia Tech has developed a robotic four-winged ornithopter called the TechJect Dragonfly that fits in the palm of a hand and combines the flight capabilities of a quadricopter, helicopter and fixed wing aircraft in one... Continue Reading TechJect’s Dragonfly micro UAV flies like a bird and hovers like an insect
