Pentagon's Robo-Hummingbird Flies Like the Real Thing

Pentagon's Robo-Hummingbird Flies Like the Real Thing

www.wired.com

Military-backed researchers have built a tiny drone that looks and flies like a hummingbird, flapping its little robotic wings to stay in the air. So far, the mock bird, built for Pentagon mad-science division Darpa, has only stayed aloft for 20 seconds at a time. But that short flight was enough to show the potential of a whole new class of miniature spies, inspired by nature. Darpa just handed AeroVironment, makers of the winged “nano air vehicle,” another $2.1 million to build a hummingbot...

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[edit on 5-7-2009 by Mdv2]

I'm just not sure whether this makes me happy. On one hand, it's a good thing to see these technological improvements as they can be very helpful for military and intelligence purposes against our enemies. On the other hand, such things can easily be used against us. To spy on us or to harass us.



www.wired.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Interesting. I wonder if this is the reason for the Hummingbird crop circle discovered on....what do you know? July 2nd! Pretty cool to think that maybe they are related.

Link: www.cropcircleconnector.com...

That's pretty damn-scary... Just wait until they get even smaller, like fly sized, there'll be one in every home.

reply to post by Mdv2


Wow, that is one of the coolest things I have ever seen!..lol.. Scary, but cool. I would really like to buy one, but they probably cost more than my car and house combined!

Originally posted by jokei
That's pretty damn-scary... Just wait until they get even smaller, like fly sized, there'll be one in every home.

Biggest design problem these things have is power. The smaller they get the more impossible it becomes to power them.

I have always been paranoid about bugs being government spy toys (they started dropping ladybugs in the 50s or 60s i do believe). Just think about what they really have if they are releasing this to us... There are a lot of new strange bugs around my area.

Originally posted by Lazyninja

Originally posted by jokei
That's pretty damn-scary... Just wait until they get even smaller, like fly sized, there'll be one in every home.

Biggest design problem these things have is power. The smaller they get the more impossible it becomes to power them.

You might be right, but with the change from oil towards electricity (planes, cars), there will be huge investments in improvements of battery technology. Presumably, the size of batteries will swiftly become smaller too.

As lazy ninja said, to pull off the stuff you would see in the movies, they are going to have to come up with a helluva solution to power the machine. Trying to disguise it as a bird, bug, or whatever else with realistic movements is going to take a lot of juice.

Agreed, it'll be difficult to do, but if they're willing to show the hummingbird at the stage they're showing - what more advanced stuff is there that we're not being shown.

Also, I read this thread:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

and

www.wirelessweek.com...

Will it get to the stage where there's one of these at home leeching off our own electricity supply?

The most elegant power solution I can think of is the biological system used by real hummingbirds. If we could replicate these systems artificially, I think that would be the way to go.

Batteries, I can't see batteries getting much smaller. Unless their fundamental design changes radically. Our current batteries operate on a system where the bigger a battery is, the more juice it has in it. Technology generally gets smaller as it is improved. I don't think you can make a batter smaller without sacrificing juice. But perhaps there are like nuclear or fusion energy batteries or something crazy like that, or maybe in the future.

Really interesting article. Always interesting to see science replicating nature, and seeing how elegant and superior natural machinery and power sources are.