MIT and NASA's flexible wing could be the future of aviation

It's as aerodynamic as a traditional wing at a tenth of the weight.

A wing is one of the most technologically advanced pieces of an aircraft, designed with all manner of moving parts that take advantage of the Bernoulli Principle. Previous efforts to make the wing more flexible, like a bird's, have run into snags too. "The biggest problem was that most of these attempts relied on deforming the wing through the use of mechanical control structures within the wing," MIT News writes. "But these structures tended to be so heavy that they canceled out any efficiency advantages produced by the smoother aerodynamic surfaces." More than that, they apparently made the wing more complicated and had some issues with reliability.

New research from MIT, UCSC and NASA could bring the wing into the 21st century, though. And it involves rebuilding it from scratch, in a manner that makes the entire piece flexible rather than just moving the flaps. Using a an "array of tiny, lightweight structural pieces" dubbed "digital materials," the scientists were able to put something together that was able to twist when put under pressure from a pair of motors on the wingtip.