Credit: Willem Hoebink & Xander van der Sar

 

Welcome at Stanford's Bio-Inspired Flight Lab!

How do birds morph their body to maximize flight control and performance? | Credit: Jean Francois Cornuet

Why can animals fly effortless through environments that are visually and aerodynamically cluttered? | Credit: Henk Jan Jansen

What enables birds to turn on a dime? | Credit: David Lentink & Jan Wouter Kruyt

How does massive sensory integration enable animals to be super maneuverable? | Credit Joris Schaap & Emile van Wijk





Which aerodynamic mechanisms enable even the simplest organisms to fly stably in turbulence? | Credit: David Lentink



Lab Messages

07/02/2013

High-Speed Discovery & Outreach

Congrats to students participating in our course ME 303, they discovered humming birds have the fasted vertebrate body shake on the planet: See the  New Scientist video  Interested to make a discovery like this yourselves? You are invited to film b...


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06/13/2013

Flying Like a Fly | Robot Evolution

Congrats to our colleagues at  Harvard's Microrobotics Lab  for a wonderful Science paper on robot flies! Our News & Views article on these and other robots that fly like flies, is now published online in  Nature ...


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05/28/2013

High-Speed Film Festival | ME 303

Come check out the great high-speed movies of flying birds made by the students enrolled in ME 303 “Biomechanics of Flight”. We will serve popcorn and drinks. Day:  Mon June 3rd | Time: 11AM-noonish | Place: Atrium Bldg 550....


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TEDx Amsterdam

David Lentink | Bio-inspired Flight

Nature is a great source of inspiration; ever since we first saw animals fly we dreamed of flight. Our dream came true with the invention of the airplane by Lilienthal & the Wright Brothers, who were inspired by birds a century ago. 100 years is, however, extremely recent
on an evolutionary time scale — we can still learn from birds. Currently there is a new wave of bio-inspired innovation that is revolutionizing the design of micro flying robots. Professor Lentink has worked for several years with collaborators and students to solve key biological questions that enable the design of innovative flying robots. In his TEDx talk Lentink explains the ideas that made it all possible.

CNN Feature

The Art of Movement | Bird Flight

Click this link to see The Art of Movement . CNN visited the lab in September 2013 to learn more about how we study bird flight as an inspiration for developing flying robots. The crew visited us on campus and at our field station for two days. Since we just started, it was great to see that many lab members were able to demonstrate their bird flight research and robot development. The excellent organization by several first year graduate lab members promises a wonderful grand opening of our new bird wind tunnel facility in 2014.