The Army's $10M Spy Bat Still Too Big

Lucas123 writes "The University of Michigan's Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology (COM-BAT) is working on building a robot bat that would perform long-range reconnaissance for the U.S. Army, but U.Mich is currently struggling with miniaturizing components in order to make the bat small enough to be stealthy. 'The focus is to shrink down many electronics that while currently available would only be good if the US Army wanted, say, a 12-foot spy-bat.' Some components need to be 1,000 times smaller than they currently are. The Army's $10 million grant proposal calls for the bat to be six inches in length, weigh four ounces and use just one watt of power. The bat is supposed to be powered by a lithium-ion battery, charged by solar and wind energy, as well as simple vibrations."

Comments

Sounds like a comic book prop

[jollyreaper]

Quick, Robin! Hand me the bat-bat!

But seriously, why go with an ornithopter design? There's that excellent quote about AI's, "The question of whether a computer thinks like a person is as relevant as whether a submarine swims like a fish."

Would not a conventional ultralight drone with battery-operated propeller work more effectively than flappy wings?

Re:Magic Charge

[Bobb9000]

Since the article says it's supposed to be long-range, my guess is that the mission profile would be to sit somewhere out of the way and charge during the day, then do its recon at night. All of those methods are very useful, because it means the drone could stay in an area and continue to operate without human intervention nearly indefinitely.