To the naked eye or even to powerful telescopes, it may well look like a flying insect or bug. But it is much more than that: it is a tiny unmanned microvehicle. PhD candidates are working on different prototype designs for artificial flying creatures which will blend innocuously into the atmosphere.

The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio is the scene of this activity. There are many people working on such micro machines which have been inspired by nature. Major Ryan O’Hara created a carbon filter tobacco moth wing which can flap 30 times a second. O’Hara is basing his bugs on bioengineering, by using very thin carbon fibers, much thinner than the human hair, putting them in epoxy resin, and laying them in different orientations so that they look and act as wings. (more…)

The hummingbird is a small, nut unique bird – its wings can move extremely fast, it can fly backwards and they can hover in mid-air. Now a Japanese researcher has Hiroshi Liu who works at the Chiba University just outside Tokyo has made a robotic hummingbird, very much like the real-life version, at least a robotic imitation of it.

He plans to equip this with a micro camera which will come in use to see things in places human being cannot reach. Say if there is a building collapse or a mine collapse, the robotic hummingbird can go through small crevices and via its camera ‘sight’ survivors. Possibly it may be used even to hunt down criminals. (more…)

Everybody has seen parachutes, if not in real life then in movies or television. Those huge white billowing umbrella like contraptions with harnesses which save peoples’ lives while they are bailing out from a plane or copter, usually made of a silky fabric.

But now it seems like a new device is being designed – the Gryphon Next Generation Parachute System. This is suit which the person has to wear will have six feet wings and will allow him to glide up to 30 miles away and that also without radar detection. (more…)

Make way R2D2, a new robot is on its way in reality. While a thinking, walking, talking robot may still be found readily only on The Jetsons or in movies, Japan has already made vast strides in the robotic field. Robot developer, Tmusk and security firm, Alacom, two Japanese companies, have come together and developed a robot, prototype T34, which can be used for security purposes. (more…)