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

Posted by Dean Lamborn on February 17, 2011 at 7:00am

Nano_inhand_lg.jpg

 

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.

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Comments

  • hamish February 21, 2011 at 5:10pm
    Quite alot of funding for a robot with 0 guns!
  • Duane Brocious February 21, 2011 at 4:08pm

    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?

  • Andrew Van Der Plaats February 21, 2011 at 3:07pm

    Saw this report on this project here as well today -

    U.S. military’s newest urban spy 

  • Duane Brocious February 20, 2011 at 7:10pm
    What is siposed to be the military use of these, blow up enemy bird feeders with a firecracker?
  • Albert Augustine February 20, 2011 at 7:07pm

    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

  • Rich Weaver February 19, 2011 at 10:21am

    Quoting my source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_air_battery

    The theoretical specific energy (of a LiO2 battery) excluding oxygen is 11140 Wh/kg, or 40.1 megajoules per kilogram. Compare this to the figure of 44 megajoules per kilogram for gasoline (see petrol energy content)

    And paraphrasing from Hollywood we may not need no stinking engines

  • Bryan Steelmon February 18, 2011 at 10:02am
    why no solar panels?.... they could esialy increase the flight time....... or dosent that goverment grade stuff just come in a black box........lol.... maybe you could get ahold of those printable solar cells......
  • Dean Lamborn February 18, 2011 at 8:48am
    Hmm . . . The micro turbine in a hummingbird. Don't ya think the sound might give it away? :)
  • Paul Marsh February 18, 2011 at 6:04am

    @Jared S -- Here is "bird"...

     

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  • T3
    Jared S February 18, 2011 at 5:39am
    One of these days someone is going to invent something called "bird". It is able to find and consume readily available fuel from the environment, processing the fuel to create energy using onboard processing systems. It knows it has limited life but it has the ability replicate itself with the help of another, nearly identical "bird". The "bird" is made up of highly specialized materials to be light weight and strong.
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