A new kind of robot swims the seas and soars the skies
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By Ari Daniel

Thursday, July 9, 2026 • 2:01 PM EDT

Heard on All Things Considered
Mechanical engineer Raphael Zufferey's lab at MIT contains a giant tank filled with bright turquoise water, an array of fans that can whip up a powerful wind, and small flying robots perched everywhere you look.

It's the robots that are the stars of the show here and they're inspired by diving seabirds like the Atlantic puffin, which uses its wings to both fly and swim.

"These puffins solve this really challenging task of moving in air, in water despite the huge difference in density," says Zufferey.

He and his colleagues wanted to see if they could build a bird-sized robot that could also move through both mediums and transition between them. It's something no one had ever done before.

In a paper published Thursday in the journal Science , they describe the engineering of just such an aerial-aquatic robot. It weighs about half a pound and its wingspan measures not quite three feet, tip to tip.

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