Freaking creepy.
Posted on 06/19/2012 3:21:55 PM PDT by AnAmericanAbroad
The kinds of drones making the headlines daily are the heavily armed CIA and U.S. Army vehicles which routinely strike targets in Pakistan - killing terrorists and innocents alike.
But the real high-tech story of surveillance drones is going on at a much smaller level, as tiny remote controlled vehicles based on insects are already likely being deployed.
Over recent years a range of miniature drones, or micro air vehicles (MAVs), based on the same physics used by flying insects, have been presented to the public.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
On the other hand, it could also be a microphone for recording/transmission purposes.
Heh. Make sure you keep a flyswatter handy! I know many here have commented they'd shoot down a drone with a shotgun, or whatnot; in this case, the flyswatter would be best.
Unless it's inserted into your house when you're asleep..........
Freaking creepy.
It is creepy. If the photo is totally to scale, and presuming that’s the individual’s index finger, that’s the size (more or less) of a mosquito.
Yeah, on the one hand, it’s an amazingly cool display of micro-technology, but at the same time, it’s disturbing in that something that small wouldn’t really be notice by most people at all. Especially if it runs fairly silent.
Talk about the ultimate assassination weapon! Wait until the target goes into REM sleep, then bada-bing! A little shot of cyanide or some other lethal substance ( VX would work pretty well, I’d think ).
It’d better do its work fast, that battery probably lasts 2 minutes.
Something like that could very well take DNA samples to
verify an identity.
It looks like one of those little lithium batteries you see in quartz watches. A really tiny one.
Maybe enough battery life for one hour of continuous operation, depending on the power draw.
For me it’s hard to say. I’ve had those little batteries crap out in as little as two months, and had some that lasted four years or so.
Very true.
I doubt it would have on-board analysis capability, so it would have to fly back to HQ for that sort of business.
Then once identity is verified, send in a small swarm of hunter/killers, 10 units or so, to terminate the target.
The mosquito robot is probably brought near the target by a carrier that doubles as a charging station.
A lot of the research has been into “swarm technology”, the idea being to have dozens or hundreds of such things each of which acts individually but also collectively, like a swarm of insects.
It is at a low level of development, mostly software, but I’ve seen several video demos of small numbers of such drones acting in concert. With large numbers, they need ‘crash avoidance’ with each other.
But imagine a swarm of several dozen, each of which is equipped with a small shaped charge of high explosive that will explode on contact with a target.
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