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Tiny Flyer Navigates Like Fly
Assassin bug writes to tell us the Discovery Channel is reporting on a new ultralight autonomous aircraft that could be the next 'fly on the wall'. From the article: "The 10-gram microflyer, being developed by a team of researchers lead by Dario Floreano at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, has a 36-centimeter (14-inch) wingspan. But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue."
Who are they planning on rescuing? Commando Ants trained for search and destroy? I could even see this doing assasination missions, a little needle a nerve agent, but sorry search and destroy really?
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or search and destroy?
Like gun power, people will find ways to use them for devious acts.
Hmm. "Search and rescue". Silly Swiss, neutral, impregnably-defended, makers of great chocolate, but they can't even spell "surveillance" right on a grant application! Sheesh.
The designers were apparently Danny Dunn devotees in their youths. Can a time machine be far behind?
"Tiny" Flyer ?? // 36-centimeter (14-inch) wingspan//
Sorry, but even most drunken sots would notice a fly with a *14-inch* wingspan.
Post this when the wingspan is 1/16th inch.
Frammin' on the jim-jam, frippin' at the krotz!
But will they taste good?
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search and rescue..
"Well, we're lost. I hope someone is looking for us." (slap) "Damn bugs!"
Why bother with a flying device if you're going into rubble?
Wouldn't a snake be better? At least that way you could also run a pipe with water to whomever is trapped.
Why wasn't this linked in the post?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Difference was, mine had real wings instead of a metal hoop and had a rubber-band for the engine.
But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue.
Search and rescue my ass. This has spy toy written all over it, why can't we just say that?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I like how the author converts 7m x 7m into 75ft by 75ft. Is that how flies see the world?
Why build a fancy flight system to be swatted when we could just take a real fly, attach 2 tiny cameras (four if they're small enough, one for each direction) and a little zapper to zap its brain when it goes the wrong direction we want.
Demented But Determined.
"Indoor environments are really tough," said Erik Steltz, a PhD candidate in electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley... For example, in order to zip around indoor obstacles -- walls, corners, bookcases, furniture, ceilings, etc. -- a flyer needs to see the objects and have the brain power to steer away.
Is there a different method used when outdoors? I've never been, so I don't know.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Unshrink you?! Well that would require some sort of a REbigulator, which is a concept so ridiculous it makes me want to laugh out loud and chortle.. but not at you O holiest of gods with the wrathfulness and the vengence and the bloodrain and the "hey hey hey it hurts me"
but does it run linux?
DSL maybe, or perhaps Feather Linux?
- Andrew
I meta-moderate because I care.
It seems to me that the biggest obstacle to making miniaturized robots useful is not how you guide it but how you power it. The article doesn't address that issue.
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But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue.
Like everybody else has said, this has "spy on everyone" written all over it, in teeny tiny little letters. And naturally, once this new surveillance method is released onto the public, it will become a criminal offense to destroy one of these drones. And they'll know who just did the destroying too, of course. So the next time you hear that little buzzing sound, and raise your hand to swat at the annoying pest, expect a squad of storm troopers, er, police in full riot gear to arrive in the next moment.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
To continue the "why not just use a real mule" line from the "Robotic Pack Mule" -story:
Why not use href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2858">real insects like DARPA is trying to do. Makes more sense to me.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Much more interesting are tiny helicopters (like the one I have, see here. Once these get down to a couple of inches total size, then I can see them being useful.
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Didn't we already learn that mixing flies and machines only leads to an unmitigated disaster?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I wonder if our generation will be the last to enjoy physical privacy. With all the tiny nanotech, internet, webcams, etc coming - will our kids be numb to the fact that some pervert is probably spying on them from a ant-bot, etc.? Even in the shower, hiking, etc? Frankly, this bothers me as much as the thought of government spying.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
"Like gun power, people will find ways to use them for devious acts."
Geeks...Girl's locker room.
Of course a fly sized device could be eaten by the next bird.
Combine it with Microphone or a light sensitive system (does exist a camera+transmission system that small) and you have the ultimate spying tool, beside social engineering. Imagine the application. now you CAN be the proverbial fly on the wall watching over the should of people.
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The search part I can see, but if I needed to be rescued, I'd prefer they send a helicopter.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Reporters were left scratching their heads back when The Patriot Act classified the use of sticky flypaper as banned munitions. Now we know why.
But it could one day be shrunk to insect size and used for search and rescue... ...from people trapped by bombs FROM TERRORISTS, of course.
-Styopa
Am I the only one tired of these science stories that sound cool...but then you read them and get to the part where they say "and one day in the distant future...asuminig we get funding which is the whole reason for this press release....we could POSSIBLY do X, Y and Z with this!"
Seriously...every time I read one of these and get to the "punchline" at the end I feel like I've been had for 2 minutes of my life.
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The strongest navigation sensors on a fly are those used to find carrion etc to lay their eggs. If you want search, without the rescue, then a fly will do well, unless it happens to fly near a http://www.gordys-flytrap-fitting.com/.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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"Well oiled, that's what you are. C'mon and ride in my muscle car."
This was on makezine.com:
www.proxflyer.com/pi_meny.htm
However, I think the point isn't the size, it is that it emulates insect vision to sense its environment and avoid obstacles.
It isn't hard to make things smaller. It's the power supply that's the problem. No good shrinking something like this down to the size of an eyeglass screw if you've got to strap a AAA battery to make it fly.
We've got to create new nanoscopic power sources before this type of technology can really take off.
Flies searching for lost people? Why not use large air baloons instead, you could load them with more cameras, they could stay in the air for longer amounts of time, oh, and in case the find who they are looking for, they could in principle pick them up and bring them home.
You can't handle the truth.
'Search and Annoy'
Al-Qaeda Operations, how may I direct your
call orders these.
Patriotically,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
I'm pretty sure I could go down to my local hobby shop and purchase a "micro flier" this afternoon... Let me know if you know anyone who needs rescuing.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
Hmmmm, mayhap they could patrol our southwestern borders. w/without the nerve agent.
I see these types in those rubber band glider competitions on how long a plane can stay aloft.
f m
http://www.kent.edu/tech/SchoolNews/2003/glider.c
"But it could one day be shrunk to insect size"
With, like, a shrink ray or somethin'?
Hopefully they include a way to track down the things later so they can recover them out of the droppings of the unsuspecting bird that swallowed it in mid-flight. It could get expensive if these things had to be disposable.
I met a guy once who worked in the field of autonomous flyers. He told me "search and rescue" was essentially just code for military reconnaisance.
My favourite episode of Max Headroom was the one where Bryce spends all of his time trying to perfect a robotic fly to literally bug an enemy compound. After numerous technical setbacks, they send it off on its debut mission. After bobbing around the room a bit, it abruptly gets swatted out of existence, sending poor Bryce into shock.
Now we fast-forward to 2006, and they're testing a robotic fly in a room where the walls are all painted in stripes. Hmm...
I wonder if our generation will be the last to enjoy physical privacy. With all the tiny nanotech, internet, webcams, etc coming - will our kids be numb to the fact that some pervert is probably spying on them from a ant-bot, etc.? Even in the shower, hiking, etc?
When this finally happens, i.e., when micro surveillance is so cheap, undetectable and ubiquitous that this occurs, and it's really only a matter of time, perhaps personal privacy, outside the context of private internal thought, will simply cease to be a known concept.
Like most creeping invasions of privacy in recent times, I predict that people will slowly but surely, simply accept that they will be videoed, recorded and logged while they sleep, eat, shower, walk, talk, pick their nose, urinate, defecate, flatulate, fornicate, contemplate, drive, high five and while they browse the net. All recordings will of course be subject to 23rd century "photoshopping" and upload to the internet.
To facilitate this shift people will simply stop being embarrassed about just about anything to do with themselves. Being "caught" naked will cease to be a source of embarrassment as people will be monitored naked all of the time, by multiple sources. In a sense, this has already begun to happen with the latest airport security.
You may consider that this will have an upside in that society will "mature", but the reality is people will become even more paranoid. But not about the fact that people are watching their every move, but about what those people think about their every move. Imagine, every article of your clothing will have be made to the latest trend, as anyone you know, or don't know, can view you at any time and pass judgement. At least, so the marketing droids will have you think.
It will be like High-School, only for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and for the rest of your life. A whole new circle of hell, brought to you by mass, uncaring public complancency. Your only succor is that you will be mercifully dead before such an obscenity comes into being, but you'd better call the cremators now anyway, just to be on the sfae side.
May the Maths Be with you!
Good video and pics!
It looks great! Especially without a decent camera, batteries to last it more than 30 seconds or a transmitter good for over 30 yards.
A fly can fly but a mosquito can't mosquito.
:D
Now you tell me the second difference
Where's the cheapest ultralight hovering flyer currently on the market that can carry a 50g payload for 10 minutes?
--
make install -not war
I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/dinoriki/phliez/wor k-well-together.html
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
You can't just scale a 14-inch model to insect size and expect it to work like the big model.
Making things smaller brings a whole lot of different problems to deal with.
Just like insect can walk on water but you can't, you can expect that it'll just a whole different design to operate. So the basic claim of the article is non-sense.
a mosquito can fly but a fly cannot mosquito
Great, they've only been saying stuff like that for decades. We've been told everything from "we're going to have tiny nanobots crawling around our bodies repairing our organs" to "one day we will build computers out of sub-atomic particles". The fact is though that no one has even got close to achieving either. And until they do, this kind of lazy prediction is pointless. You might as well say "one day we'll all have time-machines". Maybe we will... But anyone can make that kind of speculation.
Right now, the difference between a 36 centimeter wingspan and the size of an insect (assuming they're talking common housefly type size) is HUGE. It's like comparing a Boeing 747 and a swan. But at the moment, building something with a 36 centimeter wingspan that flies is hardly impressive. I've been doing that with folded paper since I was a kid.
The usual abysmal quality of reporting... surely the REAL news, overlooked, is that there are some model airplane geeks who are PAID to do their thing (-with your money). And the rest of us have to buy our own toys!
"Search and Rescu my ASS"... just another privileged "cover name" for some project...
well, to deal with THAT bullshit, set up something like those Sharper Image-sold passive dusting machines. In this application, though, since the people launching these invasive little bastards, you need to spike your entire home and ventilation with undulating or coalescing waves that hopefully will destroy these critters.
Maybe the Vector control UV boxes can help. But, hopefully, once one is caught in the wild, its specs (frequency, ability to evade magnets, jamming avoidance) will be released.
In the mean time, your house or government building needs a deflector shield of some kind.
Ahh... you set up an airlock or foyer with enough energy to fry or confuse these critters. you'll have to disrobe and subject your items to intense EM waves, and you have your hair scanned for metallic stuff that is not of your own DNA....
Then you NAIL them with Electromagnetic Black Flag...
Hmmm... image word: "impact"
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t want that snake pokin' in your ass, filling you up, either. Butt, I suppose that occurrence will depend upon the whims of the operator...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
This may be neat, but it's nothing compared to the kind of tiny flying bug that the US Department of Defense wants to develop!
But this thing is a plane, so it's a bad choice. It's not much use in the great outdoors if it's very small, because the lightest gust of wind is going to send it 50' off course. Besides, the need to maintain forward progress to ensure lift is going to make a fixed-wing aircraft a tool of limited use, except maybe for buzzing drunk schoolmates at the annual picnic.
I completely agree. Flies move by flapping their wings at a high speed, allowing for quick changes in direction and such. Fixed wing aircraft require forward momentum along with changes to control surfaces in order to change direction. The problem with a fixed wing aircraft that is the size of a fly is that not just a gust of wind, but even the tiniest ripple in the surrounding air, will cause it to either stall or move off course. Not to mention they would have to miniaturize everything: the propeller, power source, cameras, and all other on board electronics. The article says that it could one day be used for search and rescue but I don't know how an autonomous robot is going to know to look for humans, unless it has an infared sensor which just adds that much more weight. And even then, they would have to have a computer on the airplane that would understand all of this information. And to think, it has a 14" wingspan right now and all it can do is avoid walls! I'm sure the inventor has good intentions and all but this just sounds completely unreasonable to me.
...here
hats off!! you are my brother.
"...has a 36-centimeter (14-inch) wingspan. But it could one day be shrunk to insect size..."
Um, what is "insect size"? Meganeura is thought by many to be the largest insect that has ever lived, and it had a wingspan of about 2 feet.
It keeps bumping into the screen? And then dies on the windowsill?
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
The robotic insects will be a terrific opportunity for spying, but they will be even better for terrorism. A terrorist group can go for the leader of the opposing team (the prime minister, the president etc) without doing damage to the population: all it takes is a tiny robotic insect with a needle, a deadly poison and a self-destruct mechanism.
Maybe the next version of bodyguards will have DDTs instead of guns...
What would happen if it flew over a steaming pile of cow shit?
Friends don't let friends line-dance.
Looking at declassified technologies developed decades ago, you can see technology that was "impossible" at the time was actually in existance. I wouldn't be surprised if there exist microbots the size of a flea that can fly around somewhat clumsily and send images or videos back to a receiver.
LS
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