Flying Walking Robot Turns Wings Into Legs. Here's a new robotics term for you to memorize: multi-modal locomotion. It means locomoting in multi-modes, and that just means getting around in more than one different way. Most animals are multi-modal: they can walk and swim, or walk and fly. This isn't a coincidence, because there are clear advantages to being able to do move multi-modally, with capability and efficiency coming out near the top of the list. The disadvantage is that generally, you need a substantial amount of extra hardware for each mode of locomotion, but EPFL has managed to create a UAV that can use its wings to walk.
This robot takes advantage of "adaptive morphology," where you've got one structure (the wings, in this case) that can be used for multiple locomotion modes. In a search and rescue situation, you might use a capability like this to fly around and get a good overview of an area, and then land and crawl around under some bushes if you spot something interesting. Thanks Ludovic! Autonomous Flying Robots: Davide Scaramuzza at TEDxZurich. HyTAQ Robot. CrazyFlie flight. Nano quadcopter wii. Learning Based MPC on a Quadrotor. Epson FLYING ROBOT in 2004..hmm whats available in 2010? Building a Low-Cost, DIY surveillance quadrotor Quadrotor Autonomous Flight and Obstacle Avoidance with Kinect Sensor Quadrotor Autonomous Flight and Obstacle Avoidance with Kinect Sensor.