And it can balance perfectly on power lines.

Scientists at UC Berkeley developed an experimental drone called the Midair Reconfigurable Quadcopter. As the name implies, the drone can shape-shift in midair, a report from NewAtlas reveals.

The team, from UC Berkeley’s High Performance Robotics Laboratory (HiPeRLab), used passive unactuated hinges, meaning that no extra battery-sapping actuators or sensors are required. In other words, each of the hinges folds inwards when its rotor stops or goes in reverse, and outwards when the rotor is powered up.

The quadcopter is able to fold any two of its arms using this method and still maintain stable flight. That means the drone can shift into a number of different shapes. The researchers say that it could, for example, squeeze through a narrow opening, and its folded-down arms can also be used to grasp objects.

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Kawasaki has shoehorned the supercharged 1,000cc engine from its wild H2R hyperbike into a heavy-lift autonomous cargo helicopter, and has now demonstrated a robotic system for loading and unloading it without exposing humans to those big blades.

The K-Racer X1 is a beast of a drone, roughly the size of a small car. It rises vertically on a helicopter-style top rotor, but where there’s normally a tail rotor to balance out torque, this machine uses two forward-facing props mounted at the end of stubby wings. These props double as forward propulsion, with the wings providing some lift.

Kawasaki is yet to specify how fast this thing will fly, but we doubt it’ll be too quick; assuming that top rotor keeps spinning in cruise flight, top speed will be limited by retreating blade stall, which causes asymmetric lift.