Electric propulsion
Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion
Watch Youtube video of ion drive
First flight of an ion-drive aircraft
Structure
Toughening in the ironclad diabolical beetle
Computational design hits record resolution [pdf]
Giga-voxel computational morphogenesis for structural design [pdf]
Machine learning
Autonomous balloons take flight with artificial intelligence
Glider soaring via reinforcement learning in the field [pdf]
Aerodynamics
The extraordinary flight of the dandelion [pdf]
A separated vortex ring underlies the flight of the dandelion [pdf]
Dandelion seeds fly using ‘impossible’ method never before seen in nature
The aerodynamics buzz from mosquitoes
Autonomous drones
Science, technology and the future of small autonomous drones [pdf]
Untethered flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle
Controlled flight of a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles, [pdf] 4 November 2019
Dynamic obstacle avoidance for quadrotors with event cameras [link] [pdf]
Insect flight
Insect-sized robot takes flight: RoboBee X-Wing [video]
A tailless aerial robotic flapper reveals that flies use torque coupling in rapid banked turns [more]
Smart wing rotation and trailing-edge vortices enable high frequency mosquito flight
Insect-sized robot takes flight: RoboBee X-Wing [video]
Untethered flight of an insect-sized flapping-wing microscale aerial vehicle [pdf]
Space technologies