This bird-like robot has a claw that it could use to perch on branches it has flown to. It could potentially be useful for collecting samples in hard-to-reach places or silently observing animals in their natural habitat.
Landing and perching on a branch is easy for most birds, but it is very difficult for robots that fly like birds because of their larger size and the complexity of landing on a thin object.
Now, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and his colleagues have developed a robotic bird – which has a 1.5-metre wingspan…
