Long before Dune put ornithopters on screen, French engineers were trying to build a real flapping wing military aircraft ...

Flapping-wing robots that mimic the flight mechanics of birds and insects are closing the control gap with conventional quadrotor drones, according to a cluster of recent peer-reviewed studies.

The flying machine featured here is called an ornithopter, and its conceptual origins date back at least as far as the late 15th century, when Leonardo Da Vinci first produced drawings of a bird-like ...