New flexible drone can withstand collisions without sacrificing speed or agility

For more than a hundred years, quadcopters have been built according to the same basic principle. Four arms, each with a propeller, extend from a rigid central body. This design is ideal for precise, agile flight, but it has one major weakness—the drones are highly sensitive to unexpected contact with their surroundings. If they bump into a wall or another obstacle, they can become destabilized or even break apart.