Spy Fly

opencity writes "CNN (and AP) reports on the 'Spy Fly' project. "Biologists and technologists at the University of California, Berkeley have spent the past four years developing a tiny robot, called the Micromechanical Flying Insect, that they say will one day fly like a fly." Good technical stuff on the Cal Berkeley page. The Pentagon likes the idea for spying and battlefield deployment but their page has no info about weaponization or command / communication technologies."

Comments

Appologies to everyone

[loraksus]

Berkely researchers are close to actually getting their models to fly, but according to a source within the university, there were still some bugs to work out.

Actually, this is pretty damn cool, these things weigh less than 1/24th of a penny, have a wingspan of a quarter. The propulsion system on this thing is pretty interesting / amazing.

From DARPA page:

[Alex Belits]

ENVISIONED DELIVERABLES (5/2003): 2.5 cm MFI capable of laboratory flight

I guess, they were way too optimistic about the schedule. Not to mention that their server runs Windows.

Re:Yeah and thats why the world is fucked up

[pben]

In the USA education is paid for by the local and state goverments not the feds. So the feds spend about 20 billion but the states spend about 150 billlion and the local goverments spend about another 140 billion. I would perfer that Goorge Bush the younger keep his 20 billion and leave the schools to local goverment. I also don't want the loacl govement developing weapons or spy devices. Keeping the powers seperated might protect my freedom a little longer.