It's a Nano Hummingbird!
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.
Comments
@Justin -- "Hopefully something like micro turbines will come along shortly."
Since you mentioned it, you might already be aware of this, but MIT was looking at micro-turbines some time ago. I think the project has been all but abandoned, but that doesn't mean it might not come up again. One of the initial goals was power generation, i.e. turbine powered batteries. But their use was proposed for micro air vehicles (MAVs). Here's an old article on the subject: "Turbines on a Dime."
what is the next step, big brother is watching you ...
Aerovironment is always a source of inspiration...
Combine those two with this Silverlit toy and sell to the US Govt for millions:
Not FPV yet, but close:
There is an FPV surface version though:
I'd love to see the guts though.
I think "Airhogs" has them for $25 at TrU. ; )
cool, but it's way bigger than a Hummingbird
little flight time (maybe much compared to size but still not long)
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