‘Robo Raven’ Flying Machines Created in the Style of Leonardo

Professors S.K. Gupta, Ph.D. and Hugh Bruck, Ph.D., have built the first-ever bird robot with independently-moving wings. This development makes the robot’s flight so acrobatic and maneuverable that their “Robo Raven” can do dives and flips and was even attacked by a hawk. To make their robot feasible, Gupta and Bruck not only had to engineer all of the robotic control systems to behave like a bird, but they also had to use advanced manufacturing technology such as 3-D printing, with design inspirations drawn from nature.