Robots inspired by moths, locusts, flies and swifts will take to the sky this week in an international competition for micro aerial vehicles in Agra, India. Teams will vie for the title — as well as up to US$600,000 in funding — for their tiny flying machines. [See the original, a pdf, or read on...] [...]

Mosquitoes can walk on water as well as any waterbug, or stick to a wall like Spiderman. A team led by C. W. Wu at the Dalian University of Technology in China mounted a mosquito’s leg on a needle and pushed it down onto a tub of water on a digital balance. By varying the angle, they found that a single leg could hold 23 times a mosquito’s weight before becoming submerged, they report in July’s Physical Review Letters.

Robotic aircraft of the future, used for reconnaissance or communication, may need to rely on wing morphing, a trick mastered ages ago by birds for long flights. By measuring how ultraversatile swifts morph their wings to double their gliding time or triple their turn rate, researchers have given both biologists and engineers a greater understanding [...]