It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's A Drone!!

 

It's a Nano Hummingbird!

Nano Hummingbird

Los Angles Times Story

Aerovironment has been working on this since 2006. Under a $4 million contract from Darpa they have a hummingbird drone that weighs 19 grams, flies 11 mph, can hover, fly forwards, backwards or sideways, turn clockwise and counterclockwise and flight time is 8 minutes.

 

19 grams! Battery, motors, communications, video camera, and hummingbird paint scheme. That's less than 4 nickels in weight.

 

The pentagon mileposts for this project include hovering in a 5 mph wind, fly indoors and back out through a normal size doorway.

Views: 176

Comment by Albert Augustine on February 20, 2011 at 8:07pm

hmm a humingbird drone looks pretty good but 8 minutes of flight time is a little low

need that revolutionary battery tech maybe those solar cells or stick a wind turbine to it

@Paul Marsh

I need one of those

then all it needs is kevlar and some stinger missles then we can sell them to the goverment for millions haha

Comment by Duane Brocious on February 20, 2011 at 8:10pm
What is siposed to be the military use of these, blow up enemy bird feeders with a firecracker?
Comment by Andrew Van Der Plaats on February 21, 2011 at 4:07pm

Saw this report on this project here as well today -

U.S. military’s newest urban spy 

Comment by Duane Brocious on February 21, 2011 at 5:08pm

An urban spy? 'cause nobody is going to notice a hummingbird in a city? They'll either take photos of it, try and catch it or shoot it. They should have made a spy pidgeon, even better a rat. Easier to do and wouldn't be noticed.

Did they really think this through before spending our tax dollars?

Comment by Hamish on February 21, 2011 at 6:10pm
Quite alot of funding for a robot with 0 guns!

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