An artificial butterfly takes wing in a video from the Institute of Physics.
Why a robo-butterfly? Some robotics experts build buglike or birdlike machines, also known as entomopters and ornithopters, to serve as tiny airborne spies. Japanese researchers had a different purpose in mind: Harvard’s Hiroto Tanaka and the University of Tokyo’s Isao Shimoyama wanted to figure out how actual swallowtail butterflies navigate through the air.
You see, because the swallowtails’ forewings partly overlap their hind wings, they don’t have as m