Flopping, flapping drone can walk as well as fly


There are a lot of flying drones out there, and quite a few walking Terminator-style robots as well. But it takes a rare breed of mad genius to create a drone capable of moving both on land and through the air. Meet Mr. Ludovic Daler, today's madman.
Mr. Daler is a mechanical engineer over at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute Of Technology, Lausanne) in Switzerland. They're the folks responsible for the cheetah-cub robot and Clip-Air, which is to say that EFPL just might be a super villain academy. Case in point, Mr. Daler has named his walking/flying 'bot after himself. Meet the DALER. Dr. Who fans, make your trash canreferences here.

Granted, Daler's last name actually lends itself pretty easily to acronyms. DALER actually stands for "Deployable Air Land Exploration Robot", which is a pretty darn appropriate explanation of what this little bot is. The drone can be slung into the air manually, cruise around a bit using its wing flaps, and then land. Oh, and then it can crawl around on whatever sort of terrain it finds, thanks to what Mr. Daler terms its "whegs." We believe that term to stand for "whingy-wheely legs", because otherwise there would be no need for the "h" to be in there.
The one thing the DALER's name doesn't quite evoke is the creepy feeling that you get when watching it in action. For that, you'll need to check out the video below — but don't forget: we warned you. The horror. The horror!