According to a news release from the American Physical Society, researchers have created a small flying robot that soars like a jellyfish. The invention reveals a novel technique for flight that could help develop small robots for surveillance missions. The robot was constructed at a lab in New York University.

“Our [creation] is an aerial jellyfish if you will,” Leif Ristroph, assistant professor of mathematics at NYU, told NBC News.

“No one’s ever built this, and as far as we know nature never built it either to fly in air,” added Ristroph. “Maybe that indicates that it’s a bad idea? In any case we got it to work, so maybe not that bad.”

According to the researchers, many techniques for constructing tiny flying robots attempt to replicate the motions of insects like fruit flies. According to Ristroph, however, the flapping wing of a tiny fly is unstable. To continue flying, a fly must keep track of its environment to observe every gust of wind or potential predator, changing its flying motion to react to these obstacles. Replicating a fruit fly’s technique is very difficult.

Ristroph did some thinking about the way a fly navigates through the air and he came up with a novel method of flapping-wing flight that doesn’t require any type of control or feedback system in order to maintain stability. He said the new technique is very similar to the swimming motions of jellyfish.

The robot weighs just two grams and is eight centimeters in width. It flies by moving four wings that are organized like petals on a flower. Though the up-and-down motion of the wings looks like a jellyfish swimming in the ocean, the robot’s fluttering flight may fundamentally be more like that of a moth. The robot can hover and move in all directions.

Ristroph and his colleague, Stephen Childress, discovered that the size of the machine relies primarily on the weight and power of the motor.

For the time being, the robot is linked to an external power source and is unable to steer, either by itself or through remote control. According to Ristroph, the prototype develops a blueprint for future robots that will undoubtedly be more advanced.

Taking the prototype to the next level is made easier by the fact that the design is simple. When it comes to miniaturizing, the simpler the better.

“And ours is one of the simplest, in that it just uses flapping wings,” Ristroph said.