Aerial-aquatic “flapping-wing” robot sheds light on how birds move between air and water

Summary author: Walter Beckwith

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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A flapping-wing robot that can both swim underwater and fly through the air is helping scientists rethink how diving birds manage life in two radically different worlds. “In addition to shedding light on the morphological and behavioral adaptations of aerial-aquatic animals, the design principles described here lay the foundation for a class of robots that can be used for limnology, oceanography, marine ecosystem monitoring, and coastal management,” the authors write. Roughly 100 bird species are capable of both flying through the air and propelling themselves underwater using only their wings. While these birds use a similar flapping motion in both environments, they adjust by slowing their wingbeats and reducing their wing area underwater. Because water is nearly 1,000 times denser than air, moving efficiently in each medium requires very different forces and wing movements. However, studying these behaviors and movements in live animals is challenging, and computer simulations struggle to model the complex interactions between flapping wings, fluid forces, and the transition from water to air accurately. As a result, the physiological adaptations and compromises that allow birds to move through such disparate environments efficiently remain relatively unknown. According to Raphael Zufferey and colleagues, robotic models offer a valuable alternative because they adhere the same physical principles as living animals while enabling researchers to control their design and movement precisely.

 

In this study, Zufferey et al. present flapping-wing robots capable of flying through the air, swimming underwater, and transitioning seamlessly between the two environments – aerial-aquatic vehicles designed to explore the physical challenges faced by diving birds and the design strategies that make dual-environment locomotion possible. The modular, 250-gram robot features a streamlined fuselage, two flexible membrane wings, and a movable tail. It is also fully waterproof, untethered, and equipped with onboard electronics, allowing the authors to adjust wing-flapping frequency and tail position wirelessly, to examine systematically how wing size, flexibility, and flapping influence movement in air, underwater, and during transitions between the two environments. By comparing data from diving birds with their experimental observations, Zufferey et al. found that complex wing-folding mechanisms are not essential for aerial-aquatic locomotion. Instead, an effective balance of wing flexibility, size, and flapping frequency is sufficient to achieve similar performance. What’s more, experiments revealed that smaller wings increase underwater speed but do not improve swimming efficiency, suggesting that reduced wing size in diving birds may primarily enhance maneuverability and prey pursuit rather than conserve energy. Wings with intermediate flexibility provided the best overall performance, improving underwater propulsion while still generating sufficient lift for flight. Because flying requires less energy than swimming, the authors discovered that it was more efficient for the robot to leave the water and fly than to remain submerged over longer distances. The study also showed that wing-powered takeoff from the water is possible without leg assistance, although it requires substantial power.

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aeb6744 

Article Title

Leaping out of the water: Aerial-aquatic locomotion with flapping wings

Article Publication Date

9-Jul-2026

New flapping robot swims and flies like a diving bird

MIT engineers’ design could lead to a new class of aerial-aquatic vehicles for ocean exploration

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Loons, gulls, puffins, and petrels are some of the 100 species of birds that can both fly and swim. These diving birds can plunge in water to swim after prey, and leap back into the air to fly away. 

Inspired by these naturally aquatic aviators, engineers at MIT and EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have designed a robot that can swim underwater, then flap out of the water to continue flying through air, much like diving birds. 

The “flapping-wing aerial-aquatic vehicle,” or FAAV, weighs less than 300 grams (about half a pound) and is designed to help scientists study the mechanics that enable diving birds to fly through air and water. 

The robot has a central body, or fuselage; two flexible, flapping wings; and a steerable tail. The wings and tail can be swapped out for different sizes. In experiments carried out in a water tank and at a local lake, the engineers identified combinations of wing size, flapping frequency, and tail angle that enable the robot to smoothly transition from swimming through water to breaking through the surface to flying through the air. 

Their results, which will appear in the journal Science, could help scientists understand how diving birds adapt their flight mechanics to move through air and water — mediums with very different physical properties. The design could also launch a new class of aerial-aquatic drones and vehicles. The researchers envision such winged robots could be deployed in oceanography to fly to and sample from aquatic regions that would otherwise be too dangerous for traditional ocean vessels to access.

“Our dream vision is for oceanographers, marine biologists, and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat, or from shore, and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility, or over a pod of whales,” says Raphael Zufferey, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “It would dive into the water to take a measurement or collect a sample, and fly back to deliver the data at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Then it could go back out to dive for more.” 

Zufferey is the lead author of the new study, which includes co-authors from EPFL and Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington.

Flight mechanics

At MIT, Zufferey heads up the AURA Lab, where he and his students engineer aerial and aquatic vehicles inspired by biomechanics in nature. The robots they build are small in size and designed to unobtrusively explore and monitor the health of oceans and waterways. 

For their new work, the team aimed to design a vehicle that can fly in the air and underwater. Any such vehicle would have to adapt to and transition between two very different substances. Water is 1,000 times denser than air, and moving through one or the other requires very different mechanics. Or so people might assume.

“You have to do some adaptation to make that transition work. But there’s a solution that exists in nature,” Zufferey says. “Birds like puffins can fly very fast through the air, and can dive and swim through water at speeds of 3 meters per second. They’re able to do pretty amazing things. So we knew is was possible. Just no one had tried this in a mobile robotic system.”

To get an idea for how diving birds fly, the team looked through the scientific literature and pulled together available data on puffins, petrels, kingfishers, and other diving birds. They observed that smaller birds flap their wings around 10 times per second when flying through air, and around four times per second when swimming through water. Larger birds have a slightly lower flapping frequency through both air and water due to their wider wingspans. 

With the biomechanics of birds in mind, the team developed a winged robot designed to flap at similar frequencies to that of actual diving birds. 

Making the leap

The new robot roughly resembles a bird, with a body, two wings, and a tail. The body contains a battery and waterproof electric motor that drives a crankshaft, which in turn pumps the wings up and down at preset frequencies. The wings are made of thin membranes that are coated with hydrophobic nanoparticles to help wick away water. And the tail is motorized, enabling it to change its angle to help the robot fly up or dive down. 

The wings can be swapped out for different sizes. The researchers fabricated and tested three sets of wings: small (60 centimeters wide), medium (80 centimeters), and large (100 centimeters). They carried out experiments first in a small water tank, then in Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

In their tests, they placed the robot underwater, about half a meter below the surface. They programmed the wings to flap at certain frequencies and the tail to pitch at certain angles throughout the robot’s flight. They then observed under what conditions the robot successfully swam up toward the surface, out of the water and into the air. 

The robot flew multiple flights with different wing sizes, flapping frequencies, and tail angles. Overall, the team found the robot was able to reliably fly, swim, and transition between water and air when it flew with medium-sized wings. Flexibility in the wings is key; the wings need to be flexible enough to minimize flapping amplitude in water and also firm enough to keep the robot aloft in the air. 

The researchers also found the robot could swim through water at speeds of almost 1 meter per second when it flapped with a frequency of around 5 herz, or five flaps per second. The robot could fly through the air at around 6 meters per second, when flapping at a similar frequency. The speeds and flapping frequencies of the robot were similar to that of actual diving birds. 

To make the leap from water to air, they found the robot should be pitched at 70 degrees — a relatively steep angle that keeps the robot’s wingtips from touching the water’s surface as it flaps up and into the air. Any steeper, and the robot would tip back into the water.

Interestingly, this combination of wing size, flap frequency, and tail pitch enabled the robot to swim underwater, launch off the surface, and fly, without something that many diving birds require: feet. When birds such as puffins and ducks take off from the water’s surface, they paddle their feet, along with flapping their wings and pitching their tails. Surprisingly, Zufferey and his colleagues found that, at least in robotics, the act of flying out of water doesn’t necessarily require a paddling maneuver. 

“If you look at birds, most birds need to paddle at the surface to take off. And the question was, do we need the same for robots? And it turns out we don’t,” Zufferey says.

Going forward, the team is improving the design of the wings to enable them to turn in addition to flapping up and down. They will also test the robot’s performance under turbulent conditions, such as swimming out of choppy waters and flying through wind. Then, they hope to deploy the vehicle to help answer questions in ocean science.

“One of the major challenges in ocean science is collecting data both frequently and across many locations, which is something this robot could do in the future,” Zufferey says. “You could send this out not just every week, but every hour. It could fly out at high speeds, dive in fly back, deliver its data, and go back out, multiple times.”

This work was supported, in part, by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship grant.

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Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aeb6744 

Article Title

Leaping out of the water: Aerial-aquatic locomotion with flapping wings

Article Publication Date

9-Jul-2026

Related News Releases

• New flapping robot swims and flies like a diving bird
  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

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Plants get wearables to track their health

With new sensors, farmers could use real-time information to manage crop conditions before visible signs of plant stress appear

Tufts University

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image: 

“The leaf sensor is more of an early warning system showing how the plant is responding in the moment, before visible signs appear,” said Nafize Hossain. 

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Credit: Nafize Hossain

A smartwatch can tell us the level of oxygen in our blood, when our sleep is restless, or the number of steps we take in a day. Now imagine that kind of tracking ability for plants.

By the time farmers see curling leaves or stunted growth in their fields, their crops may already have spent days under stress. A new innovation in plant “wearable” sensors aims to catch those distress signals earlier—before the plant visibly suffers, allowing farmers to respond and help their crops thrive.

In a recent study from Tufts University, researchers created tiny tattoo-like sensors that adhere to leaf surfaces and a stretchable band that wraps around stems. Together, they track two vital signs of plant life—the temperature and humidity beneath the leaf’s surface, and whether the stem is still growing. Even more striking, the system runs without an external battery, scavenging power from moisture evaporating from the plant itself.

“The larger promise is not merely that one plant can wear one sensor,” said Sameer Sonkusale, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Tufts and senior researcher in the project. “It is that fields could one day contain networks of plant-level monitors, each reporting early signs of thirst, salt stress, disease or nutrient imbalance. Satellites and drones already give farmers a bird’s-eye view. Plant wearables could provide something more intimate: the plant’s-eye view.”

Current methods in monitoring crops use satellite imagery and drones to get visible, infrared, and microwave data that map out greenness, uneven growth, temperature, pest damage, soil moisture, and other big picture measurements of crop stress. Soil sensors can measure moisture, temperature, pH, and some nutrient levels. And weather stations provide information on air temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind, and sun exposure.

While those measurements are useful, they focus on conditions that may affect the crops in the future or an assessment of damage already done. “The leaf sensor is more of an early warning system showing how the plant is responding in the moment, before visible signs appear,” said Nafize Hossain, a graduate student at Tufts who led the research in the Sonkusale lab.

The sensors can also be extended to track other important indicators of plant health, such as levels of important nutrients and plant hormones that are early signals of root, leaf, stem, and fruit growth, as well as response to pathogens.

Stress Trackers

Resembling a temporary tattoo, the leaf sensor is thin, flexible, and can sit on uneven surfaces, allowing the plant to breathe and bend in the wind without damaging it. “Other plant sensors exist, but their ability to track multiple stressors and growth-related parameters is limited,” said Hossain, “and the technology often relies on external batteries, which complicate field deployment.”

The sensor first developed by the researchers provides information on the “vapor pressure deficit,” or VPD. It’s a technical term, but it describes something very intuitive—how likely the air is to pull water from the plant. When VPD is high, the air is dry and pulls moisture from leaves more aggressively. Plants respond by closing their stomata, the tiny pores that regulate gas exchange and water loss. That can protect them from dehydration, but it also slows photosynthesis and growth.

The Tufts leaf moisture sensor uses vanadium pentoxide crystals separated into extremely thin “nanosheets.” The nanosheets are stacked into layers and arranged in a membrane. Another layer of graphene (made of carbon atoms) forms a sieve to let moisture through from the plant to the nanosheets. When that happens, the water forms ions, which sweep through sheets creating a current—and voila, it’s not only a sensor, but also a battery. The level of the current is directly proportional to the amount of moisture exchange with the air.

The power is tiny—microwatts—but enough, with low-power electronics and energy storage to support periodic sensing.

The stem-based device borrows from kirigami, the Japanese art of cutting paper so it can stretch and deform in controlled ways. The sensor is coated with a eutectogel, a soft, ion-conducting gel that changes electrical resistance as the stem expands or contracts. In healthy growth, the stem diameter tends to increase. Under stress, growth may slow or the stem may even shrink.

Pairing the two types of sensors is important, because plants can show stress on more than one time scale. Leaf sensors, for example, can show if the plant is facing immediate conditions that drive water loss, while stem growth captures a slower biological process.

In tests on bell pepper plants, the system distinguished healthy plants from plants facing water deficit and salinity stress. Healthy plants showed rhythmic VPD changes over time, following normal daily cycles of air moisture.

Water-stressed plants showed a rising VPD trend. Salinity-stressed plants showed a different pattern, with reduced VPD compared with controls, likely linked to altered water uptake and stomatal behavior. Meanwhile, the stem sensor tracked growth in healthy plants and shrinking or reduced diameter in stressed plants.

The sensors are built with field conditions in mind. The leaf sensor is designed to tolerate bending and stretching, while ethe stem sensor’s kirigami pattern helps distribute strain and reduces the effects of abrupt disturbances like strong winds.

The team is currently working on a fully functional wireless communication platform for the sensors using LoRa (long range) or Bluetooth-based communication standards.

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Journal

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

DOI

10.1021/acsami.6c03190 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

In-Planta Tattoo and Kirigami Sensors for Moisture-Powered Monitoring of Vapor Pressure Deficit and Growth Dynamics

Roots steer clear of plant rot

Newly identified ‘saprotropism’ helps roots avoid decaying plant matter—but not animal decay

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Institute of Science and Technology Austria

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The roots of plants bend away from decaying plant material (in the center). This process—newly identified by researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and Northwest A&F University in China—is called saprotropism, derived from the Greek term “sapro” for “rotten”. 

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Credit: © Bao et al. / Science

Decaying matter shapes life in soil, but it can also create hostile zones for growing roots. Professor Jiří Friml of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and international collaborators have now identified “saprotropism,” a root response that guides plants away from decaying plant-derived matter—but not animal-derived decay. The study, led by Yuzhou Zhang, Professor at Northwest A&F University in China and published in Science, reveals how roots adapt their growth direction by sensing local pH gradients around rot.

Plants cannot run away from danger or toward something they desire. Instead, they adjust the direction in which they grow. Shoots bend toward light (a well-known phenomenon called phototropism), roots and shoots use gravity to grow downward and upward, respectively (gravitropism), and roots can also bend toward water (hydrotropism). These directional growth responses, known as plant tropisms, help plants navigate changing environments. Now, researchers from China and Austria describe a new member of this family: saprotropism, from “sapro”, meaning rotten or decaying.

“Going beyond the classic tropisms such as gravitropism, phototropism, and hydrotropism was Yuzhou’s idea,” says co-author Jiří Friml, professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). “As an alum of my group at ISTA, he took this question further and identified saprotropism, as well as the mechanisms behind it.”

Saprotropism: Don’t touch dead plants, it’s yucky!

The researchers first showed that direct contact with decaying plant tissue strongly inhibited root growth and activated defense pathways linked to immunity and pathogens. In other words, roots treated these decay zones as biologically threatening environments.

“Animals instinctively avoid rotten food because it often harbors harmful microbes,” says corresponding author Yuzhou Zhang, Professor at Northwest A&F University in China and an alum of the Friml group at ISTA. “We wondered whether plants, although immobile, might have evolved a comparable strategy below ground.”

And, in fact, they do: The newly identified tropism enables roots to actively bend away from decaying plant matter. In experiments, roots avoided decay zones made from ‘fleshy’ matter such as apples or leaves, and—contrary to initial assumptions—also from woody material such as sawdust.

Dead animals don’t bother plants

However, when the researchers tested animal-derived decay, such as small pieces of chicken meat, the roots showed no directional growth response.

“One of the striking findings was therefore that the roots did not simply avoid anything rotten,” says Friml. “They responded specifically to decomposing plant material. This tells us that saprotropism is not a general reaction to rot, but a dedicated response to plant-derived decay.”

The response was observed not only in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, but also in crop species including rapeseed, tomato, and wheat—suggesting that saprotropism is widespread among plants.

Watching the effects of a tiny ‘plant graveyard’

The team found that a key signal comes from microorganisms, especially fungi, as they break down dead plant material. During decomposition, fungi release acidic metabolites, including organic and phenolic acids. These compounds diffuse into the surrounding soil and create stable local pH gradients around the decaying material. Roots can detect this acidity pattern even before direct contact and use it as directional information, bending away from the more acidic side.

However, the ‘plant graveyard’ does not send a permanent warning signal—it stops automatically after the matter has turned into soil. “Once the plant material had almost fully broken down, the acidic warning signal faded—and the roots stopped bending away,” explains Zhang.

To study the process under controlled conditions, the researchers used a vertical split-agar system—a flat, upright plate in which different agar media create a defined chemical gradient. As roots grow downward along the plate, scientists can observe whether they bend toward or away from a specific cue, such as acidity connected with decay.

“At ISTA, we have used similar systems for many years to study how roots grow toward water,” says Friml. A specialized vertical microscope had been constructed at the Institute for that specific purpose. “Now, that same setup helped reveal the opposite response—roots growing away from a potentially harmful cue. Unlike other tropisms, the key player here isn’t the plant hormone auxin.”

Roots dance to the sound of ABA

Within the root, an external signal is transformed into a growth decision: Cells on the root surface detect that one side of the root is exposed to stronger acidity than the other. This uneven signal changes the distribution of the plant hormone abscisic acid, or ABA, across the root tip. As a result, the internal framework of root cells is rearranged, causing one side of the root to grow differently than the other. The root then bends away from the decaying plant material.

“Our research shows that decaying plant matter is not just a passive source of nutrients,” Zhang states. “It creates a chemical landscape that roots can read. Saprotropism shows how plants interpret microbial activity in the soil and make growth decisions accordingly.”

Fundamental science with relevance for agriculture and food security

The discovery of saprotropism—a term coined by the study authors—opens up new research avenues, such as how roots interpret microbial activity in soil. In the long term, a better understanding of such root behaviors could help inform approaches in agriculture, soil management, and crop resilience.

“Crop culture practices that involve excessive incorporation of undecomposed crop residues can create large decay zones that exceed the root's capacity to navigate around them, potentially increasing exposure to harmful microbes and promoting root diseases,” explains Zhang. Understanding the molecular basis of saprotropism opens new opportunities to develop crops with enhanced ability to detect and avoid pathogen-rich environments. “In the future, breeding or engineering varieties with stronger ‘decay-avoidance’ capacity could complement conventional disease resistance strategies by preventing root-pathogen encounters before infection occurs,” he sums up. 

Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adw6568 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Roots navigate around decay regions by sensing local pH gradients

Article Publication Date

9-Jul-2026

 

Fungi and other microbes break down dead plant material in the soil. By doing so, they release acidic chemicals that spread outward like a warning signal. Nearby roots sense this acidic zone before touching the decay and bend away from it. 

 

The process in detail: A molecular framework for root saprotropism guiding navigation around microbial decay. Microbial decay establishes a soil microenvironment characterized by stable acidic pH gradients. This pH asymmetry is sensed by the epidermal pH sensor, RGF-RGFR peptide-receptor module, which converts it into asymmetric abscisic acid (ABA) distribution. ABA asymmetry drives microtubule-dependent anisotropic cell expansion and handed root twisting, ultimately steering roots away from hostile decay zones.  

 

Plants bend their roots away from a rotten apple, leaf, and even sawdust. The response was observed not only in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, but also in crop species including rapeseed, tomato, and wheat—suggesting that saprotropism is widespread among plants. 

 

When the researchers tested animal-derived decay, in this case rotten chicken, the roots showed no directional growth response.

 

ISTA Professor Jiří Friml with the mouse-ear cress (A. thaliana) — his research group’s main model organism. 

Credit

© FWF/Luiza Puiu

Trump’s Anti-Clean Energy Policies Set to Cost US Consumers $650 Billion by 2040

“The fossil fuel industry and this administration’s policies are adding fuel to the fire, and ordinary ratepayers are the ones getting burned,” said one campaigner.


US President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin arrive for an event to announce a rollback of the 2009 endangerment finding in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC on February 12, 2026.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jul 08, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The Trump administration’s rollback of clean energy policies will cost American consumers $650 billion in additional energy bills by 2040, according to an analysis published Wednesday by a nonpartisan think tank.

Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based energy and climate policy think tank, said in its report that “federal policy changes since January 2025 will increase energy prices, slow economic growth and job creation, increase air pollution and healthcare costs, and worsen grid reliability.”

The analysis examines seven major policy shifts during the second term of President Donald Trump, who—for the third time—ran on an aggressively pro-fossil fuel and anti-clean energy platform:Passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA);
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) reconsideration and repeal of Clean Air Act Greenhouse Gas Standards, Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines for electric power plants;
EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding and federal tailpipe emissions standards;
Passage of Congressional Review Act resolutions overturning approvals for state-level tailpipe emissions standards;
Actions to limit renewable energy development—especially onshore and offshore wind plants—including limitations on issuance of new permits;
Department of Energy cancellations of hydrogen hub funding and easing of 45V tax credit qualification for natural gas-based hydrogen; and
EPA’s cancellation of the $7 billion Solar for All grant program.

According to the analysis, “Households will pay an additional $650 billion for energy—an average of $460 per household in 2035 and $490 in 2040.”

Additionally, the report states that “cutting policies that drive innovation and efficiency in the transportation sector will inflate gasoline prices 14% in 2035 and 26% in 2040, atop near-term upward pressure from the Iran War and other market forces.”

“OBBBA and reduced federal support for domestic manufacturing and innovation will cost the US economy 820,000 jobs per year on average over the next decade, in addition to the 144,000 clean energy jobs lost within the past 18 months,” the publication forecasts.

“Slowing down electrification and domestic energy manufacturing will lower [gross domestic product] in all years, totaling $2.3 trillion cumulative lost GDP, with effects flowing into other economic sectors,” the study warns. “The US economy will lose $150 billion in GDP in 2030, peaking at a $250 billion net loss in 2032, then reverting to losses of $200 billion in 2035 and $120 billion in 2040.”

Furthermore, “worsening local air pollution will raise healthcare costs by $43 billion, with annual increases of $4 billion in 2035 and $4.5 billion in 2040, contributing to rising household costs alongside rising energy prices and goods inflation.”

Energy Innovation stressed that states must act to mitigate the costs and harms of federal inaction. The report recommends helping wind and solar projects qualify for expiring tax credits under safe harbor rules, removing barriers to additional clean energy development, boosting electric vehicles, supporting energy efficient electrification, and stimulating investment in new clean industries.

The new analysis—whose findings are disputed by the Trump administration—comes amid an unabated affordability crisis that Trump vowed to tackle, and as electricity prices soar in much of the nation as a heat dome, fueled by human burning of fossil fuels, broils large swaths of the country in what many experts warn is the new normal in a worsening climate emergency.

Responding to the analysis, Candice Fortin, US campaigns manager at the climate action group 350.org, said: “This report puts numbers on something households are already feeling in their bills and their blackouts. We were told cutting clean energy would lower costs. Instead, we’re seeing the opposite: rates spiking, grids failing under record heat, and households paying more while data centers’ electricity use explodes.”

“You can’t fix an affordability crisis by blocking the cheapest, fastest power we have to build,” Fortin added. “The fossil fuel industry and this administration’s policies are adding fuel to the fire, and ordinary ratepayers are the ones getting burned.”