Embodied intelligence for sustainable flight: a soaring robot with active morphological control

Abstract Achieving agile maneuverability with minimal onboard power consumption remains challenging in aerial robots, particularly in dynamic wind environments. Conventional thruster-powered systems offer agility but suffer from high energy consumption, while fixed-wing designs are efficient but lack hovering and maneuvering capabilities. We present Floaty, a shape-changing robot that overcomes these limitations by soaring in vertical airflow, harnessing external wind energy through intelligent morphological control inspired by birds. Floaty’s design is optimized for passive stability, and its control policy is derived from an experimentally learned aerodynamic model, enabling precise attitude and position control without active propulsion. Wind tunnel experiments demonstrate Floaty’s ability to hover, maneuver, and reject disturbances in vertical airflows up to 10 m/s. Crucially, Floaty achieves this with a specific power consumption of 10 W/kg, an order of magnitude lower than thruster-powered systems. This introduces a paradigm for low-power aerial robotics, leveraging morphological intelligence and control to operate sustainably in challenging vertical wind conditions.