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.

Steve Ross, another PhD candidate has built a small quad-rotor helicopter which has four motors to keep it moving. This one, however, is big, being the size of a laptop. Ross is concerned about the battery power and so is exploring means to allow the microvehicles to ‘steal’ power from utility lines. These bugs would have a hook so that they can anchor themselves to the lines and get more power.

These covert gadgets have many potential applications, but the Air Force has still not decided how they will be used. While possible visual surveillance is one application, another one is audio surveillance. These microvehicles may even be used to carry chemical weapons.

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.

Already $2 million has been spent on the research and development of this robotic bird. The bird can be remote controlled via infrared. Who knows, once it reaches the manufacturing stage, it may even find some use as a spy gadget.

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.

This will enable the person wearing the suit to take advantage of wind currents and it will also feature a navigation system and display system. If it would be possible to fit this device with a jet engine, perhaps the person will be able to move faster, much like the Jetsons.

It is not yet certain as how the person will actually land without a parachute or landing gear. That part has still to be figured out.

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.

It looks like a small vehicle on wheels and uses motion sensor technology to ‘see’ things. The best part about this is that it can be controlled by a mobile phone and the images, too, are transmitted to a mobile phone, so the person monitoring the phone can be mobile instead of being stuck in one place looking at big screen monitors.

This robot can move at a top speed of 6 mph and so can even follow intruders. It also has the ability to spray a spider web net on the intruder to entangle him and slow him down until he has been captured, ostensibly by the person using the cell phone or his back-up.

It remains to be seen how effective such a robot will be in a real life situation. It may be useful to a limited extent, but if a criminal or intruder has a gun or knife, then unless the back-up is suitably armed, nothing much can be done except capturing images in real time and hoping that these will lead to the criminal.