You may have heard about “lifters” or “ionocrafts,” in science fiction stories discussing fake worlds, or on message boards discussing the real world. They exist in both worlds, but they’re only ...

In 2017, we wrote about the ionocraft, a tiny robot that uses ion thrusters to hover silently, “like a UFO.” On Tuesday, IEEE Spectrum published an interview with one of the craft’s creators, UC ...

Imagine an aircraft that is silent, invisible to infrared detectors, has zero emissions and can hover in an eerie manner that helicopters can’t. Now imagine it coming from technology currently used to ...

Developed by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, it’s not only described as the smallest flying robot ever made, but one which flies with zero moving parts: meaning no rotors, ...

It’s hard to believe that in five years we haven’t covered lifters before. This realization was sparked when [Tyler] tipped us off about a lifter project demonstrated at the Kansas City hackerspace ...