27-06-2019 20:52 via feedproxy.google.com

Tiny Robobee X-Wing powers its flight with light

We’ve seen Harvard’s Robobee flying robot evolve for years: After first learning to fly, it learned to swim in 2015, then to jump out of the water again in 2017 — and now it has another trick up its non-existent sleeve. The Robobee X-Wing can fly using only the power it collects from light hitting its solar cells, making it possible to stay in the air indefinitely.
Achieving flight at this scale is extremely hard. You might think that being small, it would be easy to take off a
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