![Markus Fischer: A robot that flies like a bird](https://pi.tedcdn.com/r/talkstar-photos.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/09361291-61b5-403e-9c4a-cb58d896cad1/MarkusFischer_2011G-embed.jpg?h=200)
Plenty of robots can fly -- but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings. A soaring demo fresh from TEDGlobal 2011.