“For the last several years, Harvard has been developing a robot bee. They’ve done some impressive work: their sub-paper-clip-sized, 100-milligram flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle is fully controllable down to a stable autonomous hover. It’s still tethered for power, and there’s no onboard autonomous control, but the robot flaps its wings and flies like an insect, which is awesome. Tiny robotic bugs have lots of potential for search and rescue, surveillance, and exploration, but what’s been all the rage recently is adaptive multi-modal robotics: robots that can creatively handle a combination of terrains, making them much more versatile. With some exceptions, robots are usually pretty bad at this, and with some exceptions, humans and animals are too. There are ground robots that can handle water, and a few flying robots that aren’t totally helpless on the ground, but so far, we haven’t seen much in the way of flying robots that are good swimmers. “