DARPA (the same, that brought us the Internet after all) financed a research project of AeroVironment. They build some sort of new helicopter, that flies like a hummingbird. Recently it flies just for several seconds, but should show the potential of a new kind of technologies. Applications should be something like "spy-drones", that are small, lightweight and have dynamic abilities, for example to fly "10 meters per second" and that can "withstand 2.5-meter-per-second wind gusts".

Darpe just handed AeroVironment another new 2.1 million dollars to build a new, improved version of the "hummingbot". Robotic insects and birds are going to come. I personally find this Butterfly robots from Japan a little more charming.



A hummingbird (deutsch: Kolibri). Source: Wikipedia, PD Photo.

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