The future is here and this is not a
butterfly on your wall, as Israeli drones are getting tiny. Their latest
project – a butterfly-shaped drone weighing just 20 grams – the
smallest in its range so far – can gather intelligence inside buildings.
The new miniscule surveillance device can
take color pictures and is capable of a vertical take-off and hover
flight, just like a helicopter, reports the daily Israel Hayom.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) says this may come in handy in ground
clashes, when a soldier would merely take it out of a pocket and send
behind the enemy’s line.
The insect-drone, with its 0.15-gram
camera and memory card, is managed remotely with a special helmet.
Putting on the helmet, you find yourself in the “butterfly’s cockpit”
and virtually see what the butterfly sees – in real time.
“The butterfly’s advantage is its
ability to fly in an enclosed environment. There is no other aerial
vehicle that can do that today,” Dubi Binyamini, head of IAI’s mini-robotics department, told Israel Hayom.
Structures under observation can be
anything from train stations or airport terminals – or office buildings –
to battlefields and even forests in, say, southern Lebanon, where
Israel believes Hezbollah hides its ambush squads.
The virtually noiseless “butterfly” flaps
its four wings 14 times per second. Almost translucent, it looks like
an overgrown moth, but is still smaller than some natural butterflies.
This is bio-mimicry, when technology
imitates nature. And this has proved to hide a trap. When the device was
tested at a height of 50-meters, birds and flies tended to fall behind
the device arranging into a flock.
The IAI, Israel’s major aerospace and
aviation manufacturer, needs two more years to polish their “butterfly”
project. The product seems to fall into the trend of reducing drone
size. Their recent models promoted for city observation and conflicts
were the Ghost, weighing 4 kg, and Mosquito, which weighs only 500
grams.
While the “butterfly” may bring “a real technological revolution,”
as the developer predicts, to the military field, questions remain how
it will change the civil life. The drone is also propped up for police
use and there is little doubt that secret services will be only too
happy to grab such an intricate weapon.
A small insect or a mosquito over your
ear may now be much more than simply annoying. Those could easily be
micro drones which now come in a swarm of bug-sized flying spies.
In an effort to create a hard-to-detect surveillance drone that will operate with little or no direct human supervision in out of the way and adverse environments, researchers are mimicking nature.
In an effort to create a hard-to-detect surveillance drone that will operate with little or no direct human supervision in out of the way and adverse environments, researchers are mimicking nature.
The University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab
showed off a network of 20 nano-quad rotors capable of agile flight,
which could swarm and navigate in an environment with obstacles.
This is another step away from bulky
heavily armed aerial vehicles or humanoid robots to a much smaller level
of tiny remote-control devices. While current drones lack
manoeuvrability, can’t hover and move fast enough, these new devices
will be able to land precisely and fly off again at speed. One day the
military hope they may prove a crucial tactical advantage in wars and
could even save lives in disasters. They can also be helpful inside
caves and barricaded rooms to send back real-time intelligence about the
people and weapons inside.
A report in NetworkWorld online news
suggests the research is based on the mechanics of insects, which
potentially can be reverse-engineered to design midget machines to scout
battlefields and search for victims trapped in rubble.
In an attempt to create such a device,
scientists have turned to flying creatures long ago, examining their
perfect conditions for flight, which have evolved over millions of
years.
Zoologist Richard Bomphrey has told the
British Daily Mail newspaper he has conducted research to generate new
insight into how insect wings have evolved over the last 350 million
years.
“By learning those lessons, our
findings will make it possible to aerodynamically engineer a new breed
of surveillance vehicles that, because they are as small as insects and
also fly like them, completely blend into their surroundings,” the newspaper quotes him as saying.
The US Department of Defense has turned its attention to miniature drones, or micro air vehicles long ago.
As early as in 2007 the US government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies when anti-war protesters in the US saw some flying objects similar to dragonflies or little helicopters hovering above them. No government agency has admitted to developing insect-size spy drones though some official and private organizations have admitted that they were trying.
As early as in 2007 the US government was accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies when anti-war protesters in the US saw some flying objects similar to dragonflies or little helicopters hovering above them. No government agency has admitted to developing insect-size spy drones though some official and private organizations have admitted that they were trying.
In 2008, the US Air Force showed off
bug-sized spies as “tiny as bumblebees” that would not be detected when
flying into buildings to “photograph, record, and even attack insurgents
and terrorists.”
The same year US government’s military
research agency (DARPA) conducted a symposium discussing ‘bugs, bots,
borgs and bio-weapons.’
Around the same time the so-called
Ornithopter flying machine based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s designs was
unveiled and claimed they would be ready for roll out by 2015
Lockheed Martin’s Intelligent Robotics
Laboratories unveiled “maple-seed-like” drones called Samarai that also
mimic nature. US troops could throw them like a boomerang to see
real-time images of what’s around the next corner.
The US is not alone in miniaturizing
drones that imitate nature: France, the Netherlands and Israel are also
developing similar devices.
No comments:
Post a Comment