Nanosized aircraft will monitor battlefields

• nightzip

  21 Jul 06, 11:33

  Nanosized aircraft will monitor battlefields
  
  By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 20 July 2006, 14:18
  
  LOCKHEED MARTIN said it had won a contract from DARPA to design a remote controlled nano air vehicle (NAV) to collect military intelligence outdoors and indoors.
  The device will be similar in size and shape to a maple tree seed and uses a chemical rocket in a one bladed wing which will send it flying for over 1,000 yards.
  
  The thing will weigh very little and includes comms, navigation, imaging sensors and telemetry.
  
  The NAV will be aimed towards the target and will rotate in flight but can be controlled using its camera, which also transmits images back to a hand held.
  
  Lockheed Martin have $1.7 million and a 10 month contract to come up with the flying seed. µ
  
  be careful, dont let it fly inside your nose!
• tankee1981

  21 Jul 06, 13:51

  With something this small it will be very difficult to retrieve it after its mission or perhaps its meant to be for one time use only.
  
  This article sort of reminds me of the little 'spider' robots used in the movie Minority Report. This is a whole new world for peeping toms!
• the.owl

  21 Jul 06, 13:55

  they never read the novel "Prey" is it?
• tankee1981

  21 Jul 06, 14:04

  Originally posted by the.owl
  they never read the novel "Prey" is it?

  Mind telling us whats the story about? I didn't read this book before.
• the.owl

  22 Jul 06, 06:46

  Originally posted by tankee1981:

  Mind telling us whats the story about? I didn't read this book before.

  the story is about a nanotech research firm doing military research on intelligent nano spy cams and they disguise their research as medical research. the spy cams are intelligent because at any time there are millions of them working together and they are programmed to learn from mistakes etc. eventually due to some unethical stuff the nano bots got out of control and evolved super fast, in a matter of weeks they evolved to become smarter than humans and since they were nano sized they could change their shape at will and for example change to look like a human and fool the humans and stuff. the characters in the book got into some real deep shit.