SmartBird, the amazing robot that flies like a bird

Here is something truly amazing, a real WOW! : Until now plenty of robots could fly - but none could fly like a real bird. That was until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings. A soaring demo fresh from TEDGlobal 2011.

I remind you that TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

And now, watch and wonder.




Want to see how SmartBird is doing when flying not in a theatre but outside, like a real bird does? Check this other video!




Video: copyright TED Talks and Festo