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Robotic hummingbird is right out of a James Bond film

Cyriaque Lamar — Here's footage of AeroVironment's Nano Hummingbird, which was built with DARPA funding. This robot bird was built to be a spy ornithopter, can fly at a speed of 11 miles per hour, and weighs as much as a AA battery. Here are the traits DARPA required of this mechanical bird:

1. Demonstrate precision hover flight within a virtual two-meter diameter sphere for one minute.
2. Demonstrate hover stability in a wind gust flight which required the aircraft to hover and tolerate a two-meter per second (five miles per hour) wind gust from the side, without drifting downwind more than one meter.
3. Demonstrate a continuous hover endurance of eight minutes with no external power source.
4. Fly and demonstrate controlled, transition flight from hover to 11 miles per hour fast forward flight and back to hover flight.
5. Demonstrate flying from outdoors to indoors, and back outdoors through a normal-size doorway.
6. Demonstrate flying indoors 'heads-down' where the pilot operates the aircraft only looking at the live video image stream from the aircraft, without looking at or hearing the aircraft directly.
7. Fly the aircraft in hover and fast forward flight with bird-shaped body and bird-shaped wings.

via io9.com