The next generation air-ships inspired by fish

’We’re using the principle of fluid dynamical similarity to translate movement from water into the air,’ explained Christa Jordi, one of the researchers on the project at EMPA, the Swiss federal laboratory for materials research. ’We chose a rainbow trout because it’s a very general fish. It’s not a specialist in acceleration or manoeuvrability. It’s an all rounder.’

EMPA’s research project has so far resulted in an 8m-long ’Airfish’ prototype, which moves through air in the same way as a trout does in water – by bending its body in one direction and simultaneously moving its tail in the opposite way.

’We took a trial-and-error approach with this project,’ said Jordi. ’There’s always the question of whether we should do computer modelling or build it straight away, and we chose to do smaller-scale testing… it has been around four years of development and we are now working to optimise the design.’