Danie Conradie

Old-school technology can spark surprising innovations. By combining the vintage zoetrope concept with digital displays, [Mike Ando] created the Andotrope, a surprisingly simple omnidirectional display.

Vehicles that change their shape and form to adapt to their operating environment have long captured the imagination of tech enthusiasts, and building one remains a perennial project dream for many makers. Now, [Michael Rechtin] has made the dream a bit more accessible with a 3D printed quadcopter that seamlessly transforms into a tracked ground vehicle.

Flight time remains the Achilles’ heel of electric multi-rotor drones, with even high-end commercial units struggling to stay airborne for an hour. Enter Modovolo, a startup that’s shattered this limitation with their modular drone system achieving flights exceeding two hours.

Most RC planes follow a simple control scheme: elevators for pitch, rudder for yaw, and ailerons for roll. This one-to-one mapping keeps things straightforward, and fewer actuators means less weight. But nature has other ideas. Birds achieve flight control through complex, coordinated movements where different body parts can affect multiple degrees of freedom simultaneously. Now, researchers at EPFL have brought this biological approach to robotics with the LisEagle, a drone featuring morphing wings and tail that demonstrate remarkable stability.

Taildraggers remain a popular configuration for small aircraft, but they come with a significant risk during ground handling: ground loops. If the tail gets too far off course, it can swing around completely, often damaging or destroying aircraft if a wing hits the ground. Avoiding ground loops requires good rudder and brake control, and there currently isn’t a good way to learn it without getting into an actual aircraft. [Trent Palmer] is a pilot and who has been thinking about this problem for a few years, so he built a 3-wheeled electric go-cart to help pilots train their ground handling.

You might have heard of electrets being used in microphones, but do you know what it is? Electrets produce a semi-permanent static electric field, similar to a magnet produces a magnetic field. The ones in microphones are very small, but in the video after the break [Jay] from the Plasma Channel makes a big electret and demonstrates it’s effects.

The small size of action cameras has made them a great solution for getting high-quality experimental footage where other cameras don’t fit. GoPros are [Joe Barnard]’s camera of choice for his increasingly advanced rockets, but even the smallest models don’t quite fit where he needs them. They also overheat quickly, so in the video after the break, he demonstrates how he strips and customizes them to fit his required form factor.

Birds have long been our inspiration for flight, and researchers at Princeton University have found a new trick in their arsenal: covert feathers. These small feathers on top of birds’ wings lay flat during normal flight but flare up in turbulence during landing. By attaching flexible plastic strips – “covert flaps” – to the top of a wing, the team has demonstrated impressive gains in aircraft performance at low speeds.