This Robot Can Flap Its Wings to Both Fly and Swim. It Might One Day Help Scientists Study Diving Birds and Survey Ocean Habitats
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This Robot Can Flap Its Wings to Both Fly and Swim. It Might One Day Help Scientists Study Diving Birds and Survey Ocean Habitats The bioinspired device, which weighs roughly half a pound and measures around three feet wide, was also modeled after aquatic birds like puffins, gulls and loons Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent July 24, 2026 4:28 p.m. ShareCopy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrintAdd as preferred source Getting the device to transition between air and water seamlessly was one of the most challenging aspects of the work.
- ▪This Robot Can Flap Its Wings to Both Fly and Swim.
- ▪It Might One Day Help Scientists Study Diving Birds and Survey Ocean Habitats The bioinspired device, which weighs roughly half a pound and measures around three feet wide, was also modeled after aquatic birds like puffins, gulls and loons
- ▪ShareCopy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrintAdd as preferred source Getting the device to transition between air and water seamlessly was one of the most challenging aspects of the work.
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| Original publisher | Smithsonian Magazine |
| Canonical URL | https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-robot-can-flap-its-wings-to-both-fly-and-swim-it-might-one-day-help-scientists-study-diving-birds-and-survey-ocean-habitats-180989172/ |
| Publication time | Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:28:24 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-24T20:46:34.476Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-24T20:46:34.476Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | PLx2dx4ut2jn |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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This Robot Can Flap Its Wings to Both Fly and Swim. It Might One Day Help Scientists Study Diving Birds and Survey Ocean Habitats The bioinspired device, which weighs roughly half a pound and measures around three feet wide, was also modeled after aquatic birds like puffins, gulls and loons Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent July 24, 2026 4:28 p.m. ShareCopy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrintAdd as preferred source Getting the device to transition between air and water seamlessly was one of the most challenging aspects of the work. Raphael Zufferey Many birds can traverse both air and water, transitioning between the different elements according to their needs. Gulls, puffins, loons and petrels are all such boundary crossers.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Smithsonian Magazine.
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