On a warm summer morning at Princeton University, aerospace engineer Aimy Wissa was at the university helipad, preparing to fly a remote-controlled plane. But this wasn’t just any model aircraft. Across the top of its wings, Wissa and her team had carefully attached three rows of thin, flexible plastic flaps, hinged with tape.
Guided by a mini flight computer once up in the air, the 1.5-meter-wide aircraft repeatedly performed a test maneuver—gradually pitching its nose up until it lost lift and became unstable, a condition known as stalling. As data streamed in from the plane’s onboard sensors, Wissa observed that with the help of