From the first days of flight, engineers have looked to birds for inspiration when designing aircraft. Most efforts have focused on how they fly, but Ephrahim Garcia at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, believes birds have a lot to teach us about landing, too. He is designing an aircraft that can land vertically by “perching” like a bird.
The perching plane is being developed to address an enduring problem with uncrewed reconnaissance planes: they find something interesting to look at but can’t inspect it properly because they don’t have enough fuel to keep flying over the area for any…
