The creative minds at AeroVironment are currently test-flying a hummingbird. And that’s not some code name for a little remote-control airplane that can hover and fly backwards. The Nano Hummingbird is a winged vehicle with no tail and flapping wings that it uses as its only method of propulsion. And they have even dressed it up to look like the real bird.
The Nano Air Vehicle is being developed under a Darpa contract to develop a small aircraft that can fly indoors and out. Early test flights of the hummingbird lasted only a handful of seconds, but the most recent flights have extended the range to almost 10 minutes, and it can maintain a stable hover in small gusts of wind.
The tiny aircraft weighs only 19 grams [about two-thirds of an ounce] and has a wingspan of 16 centimeters [6½ inches]. The vehicle is self-contained with its own motor, battery, communication system and a video camera. It’s being developed to be a palm-sized observation-and-surveillance platform. But instead of taking pictures of a building, it can provide a video feed from inside the building.
AeroVironment recently completed the second phase of flight tests for the Darpa contract. During the trials, the hummingbird hovered for eight minutes straight, flew at 11 miles per hour, and soared from outdoors to indoors and back outside again through a normal doorway. In addition to being able to climb and descend vertically, the Nano Hummingbird can flight forward and backward. To give the video camera a full 360-degree view of a room, it can rotate in either direction during flight.
The new NAV isn’t as tiny, or perhaps as stealthy, as the now-defunct maple-seed drone. In fact, the Nano Hummingbird is slightly bigger than the average living hummingbird. Still: awesome. LINK
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