Engineers Look to Insects for Ideas in Designing Tiny Palm-Sized
"Micro Air Vehicles"
Is it a bird? A plane?
In the case of micro air vehicles -- tiny self-piloted flying machines
-- it's a little of both with some insect and robot characteristics
thrown in. While not quite able to leap over a building in a single
bound, microflyers (as they are called at the Georgia Institute
of Technology) will have some fairly astounding characteristics.
Georgia Tech engineers envision that these six-inch machines will
be able to fly to a target and feed back or retrieve information
in a variety of forms, including visual, chemical and biologic.
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