A simulation of the “aerial screw” designed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1480 suggests it would use less power than modern drone rotors to generate the same lift, and make less noise too
By Alex Wilkins
24 June 2025
Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch of the aerial screw
Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock
A flying machine designed by Leonardo da Vinci may have been functional and much quieter than modern drone designs.
Rajat Mittal at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and his colleagues have found that da Vinci’s “aerial screw”, which he proposed while working as a military engineer in the 1480s but never built or tested, may require less power to generate the same amount of lift as a conventional drone rotor.
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The machine is similar to an Archimedes’ screw, a helix-shaped pump that transports water as it rotates. Da Vinci envisaged the aerial screw as being powered by humans, which would have made it challenging to get off the ground due to weight. But with light electric motors spinning the rotor, it could have actually flown.
Mittal and his team built a simulation of the screw and put it in a virtual wind tunnel to see how it would perform while hovering in place, testing it at different rotational speeds and comparing it with a conventional drone rotor with two blades.
They found the aerial screw could generate the same amount of lift while rotating more slowly, meaning it would consume less power.