Fearing and his crew call their invention an MFI -- a micromechanical flying insect. Right now, the tiny wing -- fabricated from stainless steel and gossamer polyester -- sits in an airtight box in Fearing's cramped lab. But Fearing hopes that by the end of 2003 they will have power aboard the tiny platform and be able to send it skyward and cause it to hover. He envisions the little robotsequipped with colleague Kris Pister's "smart dust" molecules.
Pister is working on placing a camera and other sensors on a one-millimeter-square chip of silicon, the size of a mote of dust. He has already built tiny platforms far smaller than an inch across.
The possibilities of flying micro robots are awesome and uncertain, the Fearing researchers say. There are flying robotic craft -- but they're 6 inches long at least, cruise at 30 miles per hour and can't hover.
The Fearing project is funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the military is obviously interested in "spy-flies," tiny devices that could go in stealth where no human could.
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,82~1726~677650,00.html
