Insect sized Robots - DARPA's new self contained Spies

Ever hear the expression a "Fly on the wall" listening to a juicy conversation?

DARPA says absolutely the right way to develop technology - "for dangerous missions, such as hazardous monitoring and emergency relief operations"

https://aemstatic-ww1.azureedge.net/...cale.LARGE.jpg

Can't you just see one of these bugs traveling in-between downed I-Beams, rubble, looking for survivors during a major disaster? DARPA scientists most certainly feel one of the mosquito-sized drones will certainly be able to do the job - considering the autonomous AI that will be controlling the micro-engines driving it.

Have they solved the battery power issue? Typical drones run for mere moments for that sized payload, a micro-hand-held drone a couple inches across runs for about 3 minutes before crashing.

What breakthrough in advanced power is in the Mosquito allowing to have a long duration mission?

Does it leach power from the environment in some way?

Quote:

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awarded two contracts over the past two weeks for the SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms (SHRIMP) project.

SHRIMP, sponsored by the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office, is developing new actuators, multi-mode power for future untethered insect-scale robots -- also called micro-to-milli robotic platforms.

DARPA on Monday awarded a potential $3.6 million contract to Honeywell International Inc. Automation and Control Solutions (ACS) division in Golden Valley, Minn.; and a potential $1.3 million contract on 25 Feb. 2019 to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., for separate technology thrusts of the SHRIMP program.

Key drivers are mobility, manipulation, actuator material, power storage and endurance, conversion circuitry, and engineering for extremely small size, weight, and power (SWaP).

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Is the US the only country doing this? UK has it's own "flying bug" program

from RT.com

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1kGLVtbCcHk

Insect drones are also called micro air vehicles (MAVs) or micro-mechanical flying insects (MFIs).

These would be considered the cutting edge of drone technologies.

Drones were pioneered by military research labs.

After about 10 years of refinement, drones now account for about half the US Air Force fleet of flying vehicles.

The police forces around the world are major users.

Tokyo police for instance have their own dedicated drone unit.

If there is an unauthorized flying drone that is "caught", the police drone assault craft which are equipped with nets, scoop unauthorized flying objects from the skies.

Currently, the US FAA has registered 100,000 ‘non-hobbyist’ drones.

As early as 2015, some 400,000 drones were sold to civilians as "toys and amusements".

INSECT flying technique:

The wings move within a figure 8 rotation.

A smaller topside wing (like dragonflies) in the form of miniature wing flaps, whips the air flowing over the top of an insect’s wing into a field of curling vortices.

A vortex acts like the air stream from a propeller, and is critical for hovering. The vortex action then provides the lift and when oriented, the motion in any direction.

Early on DARPA was working with slightly larger drones - The CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) can be dropped in a swarm from an airplane, and guided by on-board GPS to listen in on enemy activity.

Fly on the wall, maybe in the not too distant future that mosquito buzzing around one's head isn't an organic bug, but a mechanical drone - if DARPA has it's way.

Quote:

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Posted by Bob

Ever hear the expression a "Fly on the wall" listening to a juicy conversation?

DARPA says absolutely the right way to develop technology - "for dangerous missions, such as hazardous monitoring and emergency relief operations"

https://aemstatic-ww1.azureedge.net/...cale.LARGE.jpg

Can't you just see one of these bugs traveling in-between downed I-Beams, rubble, looking for survivors during a major disaster? DARPA scientists most certainly feel one of the mosquito-sized drones will certainly be able to do the job - considering the autonomous AI that will be controlling the micro-engines driving it.

Have they solved the battery power issue? Typical drones run for mere moments for that sized payload, a micro-hand-held drone a couple inches across runs for about 3 minutes before crashing.

What breakthrough in advanced power is in the Mosquito allowing to have a long duration mission?

Does it leach power from the environment in some way?

Quote:

---

awarded two contracts over the past two weeks for the SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms (SHRIMP) project.

SHRIMP, sponsored by the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office, is developing new actuators, multi-mode power for future untethered insect-scale robots -- also called micro-to-milli robotic platforms.

DARPA on Monday awarded a potential $3.6 million contract to Honeywell International Inc. Automation and Control Solutions (ACS) division in Golden Valley, Minn.; and a potential $1.3 million contract on 25 Feb. 2019 to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., for separate technology thrusts of the SHRIMP program.

Key drivers are mobility, manipulation, actuator material, power storage and endurance, conversion circuitry, and engineering for extremely small size, weight, and power (SWaP).

---

Is the US the only country doing this? UK has it's own "flying bug" program

from RT.com

https://youtube.com/watch?v=1kGLVtbCcHk

Insect drones are also called micro air vehicles (MAVs) or micro-mechanical flying insects (MFIs).

These would be considered the cutting edge of drone technologies.

Drones were pioneered bymilitary research labs.

After about 10 years of refinement, drones now account for about half the US Air Force fleet of flying vehicles.

The police forces around the world are major users.

Tokyo police for instance have their own dedicated drone unit.

If there is an unauthorized flying drone that is "caught", the police drone assault craft which are equipped with nets, scoop unauthorized flying objects from the skies.

Currently, the US FAA has registered 100,000 ‘non-hobbyist’ drones.

As early as 2015, some 400,000 drones were sold to civilians as "toys and amusements".

INSECT flying technique:

The wings move within a figure 8 rotation.

A smaller topside wing (like dragonflies) in the form of miniature wing flaps, whips the air flowing over the top of an insect’s wing into a field of curling vortices.

A vortex acts like the air stream from a propeller, and is critical for hovering. The vortex action then provides the lift and when oriented, the motion in any direction.

Early on DARPA was working with slightly larger drones - The CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft) can be dropped in a swarm from an airplane, and guided by on-board GPS to listen in on enemy activity.

Fly on the wall, maybe in the not too distant future that mosquito buzzing around one's head isn't an organic bug, but a mechanical drone - if DARPA has it's way.

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This reminds me of the Black Mirror episode where they were using tiny drone bees to pollinate after the decline of the bee population with a not so nice outcome..Odd, how that series seems so prophetic in many ways.

Well, we all know a mosquito can give a nasty bite when it injects saliva and pathogens into the body of its intended food source - could a drone flying insect while seeking out a target (an enemy target) actually then land and inject something?

In another thread we talked about extraordinary lethal substances based on synthetic opiates - the thread is called W-18. - https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1066706 the substance is being mass produced by China.

The slightest amount is lethal. One of the drone mosquitoes could carry such a payload, or it could carry the nerve agent VX.

VX - thousands of tons of this substance has been produced to date by governments worldwide.

Intravenous VX by a drone-mosquito works too quickly for antidotes to be useful, unless they are immediately available. VX poisoning has identical symptoms and uses a treatment similar to other nerve agents, including more commonly available insecticides. Atropine plus Pralidoxime Chloride Injection is the standard "antidote" if given intravenously fast enough. Who though carries anti-nerve-agent-auto-injectors around?

How easily would it be fore DARPA to request that a payload ability, for "injection" by a deployed and landed drone mosquito - easier than falling asleep to cite Harry Potter's Dad..

Intravenous VX injected by a drone mosquito weapon can reach peak toxicological effects within minutes. After this point, the time before death depends on the dosage. With a sufficiently high dose, death can occur within 10 minutes to a few hours. For a 100 kg human, this is 2mg of VX, or 2μl in volume, an easy payload for a drone mosquito weapon to carry.

Think that DARPA is out there to just develop benign drones to just listen to the "enemy", or assist in a disaster to find people buried in rubble? Maybe thinking again would be a wise idea..

Draper Industries has already attached a cyborg control system to a dragon fly (an organic living creature) to put it under control of the "drone operator"..

ref - https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...e-takes-flight

Why the dragon fly? It can carry a bigger payload and it's battery pack is used for the control electronics, not the flight muscles (the dragon fly uses carbohydrate food to power itself) - so the range is greater..

https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/Mjg1NzUyMQ.jpeg

This technology is getting out of control. Tptb love concocting fake wars to suck money out of the public purse, and to subjegate a territory. What chance will resistance forces have when Ai driven drones can release heat seeking robo-bugs that will find their prey under almost any conditions, and inject the prey with a lethal dose of fast acting poison? Then the human size robo-soldiers arrive to clean up anything missed.

The extent that AI driven killing machines goes is almost limitless. Faster moving killers that can wipe out every living thing in an area in minutes/seconds flat.

Of course, the race for countermeasures will also require large amounts of funding from the government purse. Probably some kind of emp or magnetic disrupter could disarm or destroy these critters. But, countermeasures can also be countered.

And the madness feeds on itself.

If DARPA used all of its clever resources to investigate life saving technology, what a wonderful world we might live in. Instead we are stampeding our way into technological dystopia which will likely lead to our annihilation.

Hold steady loving thoughts that peace and prosperity finally comes to Earth for good, and the Darpas of the world are gone for goodness sake.

I know almost nothing in the way of hard information, but I met in person with an engineer in March-April 2011, in California, who'd worked on these things for a military contractor. It was a chance meeting... we'd just got talking.

He told me that the technology was already pretty advanced (and of course, classified). He never revealed any operational details, capabilities, mission specs, or anything else, and I never saw any devices, photos, or documents.

I didn't even know who he'd worked for. He just told me verbally, without any proof or demonstration, that these extremely tiny drones exist, and that they work very well.

It is not really new. This is going on long time already. I had a thread about it, somewhere else, about 6-7 years ago.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=93h4l69cD74 2013

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yScbw-nIz7o 2012

There is no privacy anymore....

I wonder on how much this technology is advanced by now. It proably has the size of a flea by now.......

Quote:

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Posted by Bob

Well, we all know a mosquito can give a nasty bite when it injects saliva and pathogens into the body of its intended food source - could a drone flying insect while seeking out a target (an enemy target) actually then land and inject something?

In another thread we talked about extraordinary lethal substances based on synthetic opiates - the thread is called W-18. - https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...=1#post1066706 the substance is being mass produced by China.

The slightest amount is lethal. One of the drone mosquitoes could carry such a payload, or it could carry the nerve agent VX.

VX - thousands of tons of this substance has been produced to date by governments worldwide.

Intravenous VX by a drone-mosquito works too quickly for antidotes to be useful, unless they are immediately available. VX poisoning has identical symptoms and uses a treatment similar to other nerve agents, including more commonly available insecticides. Atropine plus Pralidoxime Chloride Injection is the standard "antidote" if given intravenously fast enough. Who though carries anti-nerve-agent-auto-injectors around?

How easily would it be fore DARPA to request that a payload ability, for "injection" by a deployed and landed drone mosquito - easier than falling asleep to cite Harry Potter's Dad..

Intravenous VX injected by a drone mosquito weapon can reach peak toxicological effects within minutes. After this point, the time before death depends on the dosage. With a sufficiently high dose, death can occur within 10 minutes to a few hours. For a 100 kg human, this is 2mg of VX, or 2μl in volume, an easy payload for a drone mosquito weapon to carry.

Think that DARPA is out there to just develop benign drones to just listen to the "enemy", or assist in a disaster to find people buried in rubble? Maybe thinking again would be a wise idea..

Draper Industries has already attached a cyborg control system to a dragon fly (an organic living creature) to put it under control of the "drone operator"..

ref - https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/...e-takes-flight

Why the dragon fly? It can carry a bigger payload and it's battery pack is used for the control electronics, not the flight muscles (the dragon fly uses carbohydrate food to power itself) - so the range is greater..

https://spectrum.ieee.org/image/Mjg1NzUyMQ.jpeg

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I guess most of you have seen this youtube video already ?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM

I think the presentation itself is fake but nevertheless it is a wet dream of the MIC/Law Enforcement. And the technology is available ...
Scary world we live in ... (technology AND the psychos) :( :loco: :facepalm:

Insect sized drones @Whisper ARE being improved, as are the power sources that can drive them.

That DARPA (Defence Advanced Research and Projects Agency) is cutting specific research contracts currently with a University and a technology company skilled in specific forms of motive design is noteworthy. The lack of a proper power source to enable long duration flights is a major concern of DARPA.

Drones have been around for many years, but solving the technical difficulties (power source to lift problem) for miniature human made high efficiency flying machines has not been solved. DARPA is wanting that solved, so they are soliciting universities and industry to research it and then build it. DARPA is for the MILITARY, not for civilian developments, and the goals of military are to win wars against the "enemy", not to create something that makes it easier for civilians to live comfortably in society.

As was pointed out in the OP post 1 and post 3, the "other than surveillance use" the "assault weapon" is there looming. As was pointed out in the W-18 thread the influx of an intensely deadly in microscopic amounts substance which can be attached to "drones" is technically possible (with drones with about 30 minutes flight time). And pointed out in post 3, the substances that can be deployed by an insect sized drone, which is VERY hard to spot with any type of radar monitoring, can indeed kill the "enemy", with very small amounts, making them ideal payloads for a military assault weapon.

The last video that you posted (with a reference to 2012) uses a title "Military Insect Spy Drones Some Emit HAARP-Type EHF" attaches an absolutely BOGUS description of HAARP emission, and is off-topic - I feel that title is LUDICROUS - (https://youtube.com/watch?v=yScbw-nIz7o) and does not provide useful evidence for actual insect sized surveillance spy drones.

Below is a sample for the readers to see some of the "believe this" "fact" images in the video:

http://chanlo.com/images/nonsense-1.jpg

http://chanlo.com/images/nonsense-2.jpg

Existing high-tech cutting edge industry is focusing on solving the power to payload problem - Modifying a large dragon-fly with a special type of control system which doesn't damage the insect's inherent highly evolved brain-to-muscles circuitry.

The author of that last movie @whisper posted obviously had no clue about what is real, what is dramatic image fabrication, and what is utter nonsense. Putting a "radar dish" on a "fly" and stupid looking circuitry exposed in the fly to make it seem impressive most certainly would amuse one not skilled in electronics, microwave, and micro-engineering. The movie's credibility then goes into the toilet with such images.

The real developments of a biological flying insect harnessed with real "control equipment" to put it under the control of the drone operator is part of the DARPA techno-evolution, and the technology is new and getting more efficient.. (DRAPER : https://www.draper.com/news-releases...pecial-service ) The article is a good read about what technically is accomplished.

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JANUARY 19, 2017

CAMBRIDGE, MA – The smallest aerial drones mimic insects in many ways, but none can match the efficiency and maneuverability of the dragonfly. Now, engineers at Draper are creating a new kind of hybrid drone by combining miniaturized navigation, synthetic biology and neurotechnology to guide dragonfly insects.

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The innovation of DRAPER - DragonflEye (the code name for the project) has been a team effort between Draper and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) at Janelia Research Campus to create new optogenetic tools that send guidance commands from the backpack to special “steering” neurons inside the dragonfly nerve cord.

Research at HHMI—led by Anthony Leonardo, Janelia Research Campus group leader—has led to a deeper understanding of “steering” neurons in the nervous system of the dragonfly that control flight.

This particular type of research was described in a post/thread years ago that I discussed too - using LIGHT (photons) to trigger nerve groups. DRAPER has taken that "thought" of using opto-stimulation into actual practice. Building it in other words.

Harnessing a large insect without having to invade the body with wires solves a need to develop efficient "androidic-organic" robots.

If one considers the implications, a similar backpack strapped onto a human with photo-sensitive nerves means an efficient (as far as organic power derived from food) drone-like "just following orders" soldier will function at the command of the drone operator, who follows the instructions of the AI computer making the most logical choices to "win the war/skirmish", who follows the General, who follows the political policy...

The flying miniature android-organic insect allows for stealth, and potentially being immune to EMP countermeasures. It would not be excessively difficult to shield the electronics in the "backpack" for the insect.

Using the insect solves the power to flight to payload efficiency problem.

I would suspect that DARPA and the universities would turn to using a methanol fuel cell system, that cracks the hydrocarbon into electricity, using an advanced type of nano-catalyst. The efficiency they obtain then could achieve the insect's hydro-carbon (carbohydrate) fuel to power curve.

That type of stuff in 2012 was not solved.

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re @operator - that movie that was posted (https://youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM) mixes together some fact with a LOT of fiction about attacks on Congress. That particular attack hasn't happened, and the fabrication doesn't say clearly "in advance" that it is a hallucination/fabrication of the you-tube creator. Very Orson Welles - War of the worlds type of presentation - Most certainly there is an issue coming up with the science behind androidic-organic synthesis.

In light of the title and OP what is thei feeling on using insects, real insects as "drones" (slaves) ?

Title - Why Insects are Creating the Buzz in Drone Development

ref - https://www.cbronline.com/in-depth/i...ne-development

Darpa was founded in 1958 by President Eisenhower. https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa...y-and-timeline

It published its interest in micro-robotics - https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-07-17 - 7/17/2018 date

https://www.darpa.mil/DDM_Gallery/shrimp-619-316.png

“The strength-to-weight ratio of an actuator influences both the load-bearing capability and endurance of a micro-robotic platform, while the maximum work density characterizes the capability of an actuator mechanism to perform high intensity tasks or operate over a desired duration,” said Polcawich. “Making significant advances to actuator mechanisms and materials will greatly impact our ability to develop micro-to-milli robotic platforms capable of performing complex tasks in the field.”

In addition to advancing the state-of-the-art for actuator technology, SHRIMP seeks to develop highly efficient power storage devices and power conversion circuitry. Most micro-robotics platforms rely on tethers for power, processing, or control, and are significantly constrained by energy-inefficient actuation technology as well as limited-energy storage devices. As SHRIMP aims to create complex micro-to-milli robots that operate independently, creating compact power sources and converters that can support high-voltage actuation mechanisms and significantly reduce battery drain becomes critical. As such, SHRIMP will explore fundamental research into power converters that can operate at frequencies of tens of Hz with exceptional efficiency as well as high energy density and high specific energy battery technologies.

“Micro-to-mm sized platforms provide a unique opportunity to push the development of highly efficient, versatile microelectronics,” said Polcawich. “While the goal of SHRIMP is develop small-scale, independent robotics platforms, we anticipate that discoveries made through our actuator and power storage research could prove beneficial to a number of fields currently constrained by these technical challenges–from prosthetics to optical steering.”

That pretty much is what I was describing in my posts above - the issue is the power pack and the efficiency of the conversion of stored power into directed motive action. The very last words in the above sentence describe OPTICAL STEERING. Nobody would idly know what means/is "optical steering " unless one connects the dots with DRAPER's research on using neural-optics (nerves triggered by optical stimulation to steer an insect, (or other organism) on command.

Reading deeply into DARPA research and proposals requires at times looking deeper in-between the lines; having a certain skill level in the technologies to understand what they REALLY want, what is not talked about openly but understood "by those in the industry" (wink wink) that funding will be provided to "explore" additional uses of any basic research.

When neural prosthetics for instance is talked about, helping soldiers with blown off limbs to get a replacement motorized prosthetic what they are really looking for is how to make a soldier with intact limbs be controlled at a distance to robotically obey commands. Prior to that, the soldier will be trained to operate a mechanical power suit (think iron-man generation 0.1) with slight movements of their muscles, eventually the suit to be controlled by electrical signals from the muscles and nerves/brain (think FireFox, the Russian brain assisted fighter jet).

To "enlist" insects to be soldiers, er, robots, er biological-allies.. the descriptor gets fuzzy to justify the experimentation and modification of the lifeforms for military applications.

Optogenetics tends to be one of those "repackaged" programs - https://www.bioopticsworld.com/artic...e-program.html

Neuroscience/Optogenetics: Optogenetics a cornerstone of DARPA's neural interface program 09/13/2017

It is the key into making nerves fire, or not fire. When a nerve fires it can cause movement of muscles. When it stops firing, the muscle can stop movement. And nerves and muscles are everywhere in living bodies. Then learning how to do it gives the researcher an insight into total biological control of the organism.

Here is where DARPA was behind DRAPER's experimentation -

The Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program, launched in 2016 to facilitate precision communication between the brain and the digital world, has taken a giant step: In July 2017, its founding agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), awarded $65 million to help realize this idea over the next four years.

Of the six teams chosen to help create and demonstrate the high-resolution neural interface, three are pursuing optical technologies as part of an implantable system that promises a foundation for future therapies to restore sensory deficits. And optogenetics features prominently in each of these. (Remember they use benign topics such as "therapies" to detract from seeing "robotic uses")

DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense agency responsible for emerging technologies to aid the military, aims for an interface that would significantly boost the conversion of neurons' electrochemical signaling into binary code.

The awards cover both fundamental research (to deepen understanding of how the brain simultaneously processes hearing, speech, and vision) and biocompatible technologies to efficiently interpret neuronal activity.

Reading, writing, and neurons

In one project, a team led by the University of California, Berkeley's Ehud Isacoff received $21.6 million to develop a novel "light field" holographic microscope that will detect neuronal activity in the cerebral cortex, and use light to modulate neurons by the thousands, or even millions, with single-cell accuracy.

The ultimate goal is to enable physicians to "read from" and "write to" the brain—in the meantime, the team is working on quantitative encoding models to predict neuronal response to external stimuli, both visual and tactile.

The researchers will apply their predictions to structure light-stimulation patterns designed to elicit specific responses.

Encoding perceptions into the cortex could enable those with blindness to see or those with paralysis to feel touch, and promises the closed-loop input-output needed for complex control of artificial limbs, for instance. (I published in 1982 a non-invasive method to allow the blind to see with the IEEE and presented it, DARPA was there as well as other military "spies")

To enable communication with the brain, the team will genetically modify neurons to fluoresce when action potential fires, and to respond to light pulses.

To read these neurons, the researchers are creating a device that mounts to an opening in the skull. (That is called INVASIVE technology).

The device is a miniaturized version of a microscope Isacoff has used to read from and write to thousands of neurons in the brain of a larval zebrafish. In developing it, the researchers will leverage compressed light-field microscopy (based on work by Ren Ng, and developed in the labs of Laura Waller and Hillel Adesnik) to capture images using a flat sheet of lenses that allows focusing at all depths. Able to reconstruct images computationally in any focus, it can simultaneously visualize and monitor the activity of up to a million neurons at various depths.

For the writing component, the team is developing a means to project light patterns using three-dimensional holograms—stimulating large numbers of neurons in a way that reflects normal brain activity—at multiple depths under the cortical surface. They will use a spatial light modulator developed by Valentina Emiliani at the University of Paris, Descartes.

The microscope and modulator will fit inside a cube small enough (at 1 cm) to be carried comfortably on the skull. The device will direct light with precision sufficient to hit one cell at a time, and "drive patterns of activity at the same rate that they normally occur," Isacoff says.

In addition to UC Berkeley professors, the work involves researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory Bionics Institute, Boston Micromachines Corporation, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and other subcontractors that will help the project by providing funds for design assistance, prototyping, and fabrication.

Translating imagery direct to the brain
Roughly $25 million of the NESD program goes to Cortical Sight, an international consortium led by Jose-Alain Sahel and Serge Picaud of France's Institut de la Vision to develop a system able to restore vision by optogenetic stimulation of the visual cortex. With the CorticalSight system, implanted electronics and micro-LED optical technology will facilitate communication between a camera and neurons in the higher areas of the brain, and thus induce visual perception while bypassing damaged retinal ganglion cells (photoreceptors).

The camera attaches to eyeglasses and serves as an artificial retina, filming the live environment in high resolution. The brain implant will use algorithms to transform this visual information into light signals that can be interpreted by neurons in the visual cortex made light-sensitive by expression of a microbial opsin. The brain then does its usual work of translating the visual perceptions into mental images.

The CorticalSight consortium also involves the Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Stanford University, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission-Leti, and companies GenSight Biologics, Chronocam, and Inscopix.

A prosthetic visual cortex
Finally, Vincent Pieribone of the Yale University-affiliated John B. Pierce Laboratory (New Haven, CT) will lead a project to study vision and to develop an interface system in which neurons, modified to respond to light stimulus and capable of bioluminescence, communicate with an all-optical prosthesis for the visual cortex.

As part of this effort, a team from Rice University (Houston, TX) will receive $4 million over four years to create an optical hardware and software interface that will detect signals from neurons genetically modified to produce light when active. Caleb Kemere, Assistant Professor in the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering, explains that some NESD-funded teams are investigating devices with thousands of electrodes to address individual neurons, but are "taking an all-optical approach where the microscope might be able to visualize a million neurons."

The above projects spearheaded by DARPA giving immense amounts of funds to sympathetic organizations hungry for "grants" spun off such work into controlling INSECTS - after all, who cares about insects? What a logic eh?

Total bull****, first posted in 2012:
http://infernalmagnet.blogspot.com/2...ng-insect.html

Nothhing DARPA, maybe private, but not in this size. How do you power and steer this thing? 4/5G? WIFI? How long does it stay in the air? Sources please.

Sorry, as a drone enthusiast, I'ḿ not buying this.

Hare's the most up to date info on SHRIMP:

https://www.fbo.gov/index?id=26d25eb...ced04304fa1296

Re-reading the OP - we point out clearly the issue about power supplies:

Quote:

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Have they solved the battery power issue? Typical drones run for mere moments for that sized payload, a micro-hand-held drone a couple inches across runs for about 3 minutes before crashing.

What breakthrough in advanced power is in the Mosquito allowing to have a long duration mission?

Does it leach power from the environment in some way?

Quote:

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.. awarded two contracts over the past two weeks for the SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms (SHRIMP) project.

SHRIMP, sponsored by the DARPA Microsystems Technology Office, is developing new actuators, multi-mode power for future untethered insect-scale robots -- also called micro-to-milli robotic platforms.

DARPA on Monday awarded a potential $3.6 million contract to Honeywell International Inc. Automation and Control Solutions (ACS) division in Golden Valley, Minn.; and a potential $1.3 million contract on 25 Feb. 2019 to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., for separate technology thrusts of the SHRIMP program.

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Key drivers are mobility, manipulation, actuator material, power storage and endurance, conversion circuitry, and engineering for extremely small size, weight, and power (SWaP).
Is the US the only country doing this? UK has it's own "flying bug" program

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I am a drone enthusiast, pilot, technologist, engineer, highly experienced microwave developer and user, and have had personal contact with the head of the biological department of DARPA, having met with him in California about a year ago. We talked all about the above, and the specific use of biological entities in experimental programs. If you read the thread, the idea of AI controlled autonomous insect-like (and sized) drones was the intent to be developed. It was pointed out by me numerous times POWER issue, flight time issue. There would not be any 4g/5g communications going on with a preprogrammed autonomous flight vehicle following a mission plan.

Have you ever heard of microwave (power leaching) to DC rectification techniques? In other words an out-board power source beaming energy for leaching systems, to for instance drive a piezo-electric micro actuator. The advanced actuator designs in the DARPA "Shrimp" program discussed in this thread point out developing the flight method of not using energy wasteful octa or quad propellers. Any "drone enthusiast" it seems to me would be steeped in propellers.. Darpa in my experience doesn't care about the energy wasteful propeller tech being pushed on the hobbiests playing around with photographic drones. The dragon-fly "organic drone" flies quite well with the "backpack" and it doesn't have the power shortage issue. That was pointed out as being the effective solution. How small can they modify insects? That has to be seen.

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"According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don't care what humans think is impossible."

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Cal Tech - Pasadena California - https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/d...ee-flight-1075

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Although the issue is not as profound as how the universe began or what kick-started life on earth, the physics of bee flight has perplexed scientists for more than 70 years. In 1934, in fact, French entomologist Antoine Magnan and his assistant André Sainte-Lague calculated that bee flight was aerodynamically impossible. The haphazard flapping of their wings simply shouldn't keep the hefty bugs aloft.

And yet, bees most certainly fly, and the dichotomy between prediction and reality has been used for decades to needle scientists and engineers about their inability to explain complex biological processes.

Now, Michael H. Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering, and his postdoctoral student Douglas L. Altshuler and their colleagues at Caltech and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, have figured out honeybee flight using a combination of high-speed digital photography, to snap freeze-frame images of bees in motion, and a giant robotic mock-up of a bee wing. The results of their analysis appear in the November 28 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We're no longer allowed to use this story about not understanding bee flight as an example of where science has failed, because it is just not true," Dickinson says.

The secret of honeybee flight, the researchers say, is the unconventional combination of short, choppy wing strokes, a rapid rotation of the wing as it flops over and reverses direction, and a very fast wing-beat frequency.

"These animals are exploiting some of the most exotic flight mechanisms that are available to insects," says Dickinson.

Their furious flapping speed is surprising, Dickinson says, because "generally the smaller the insect the faster it flaps. This is because aerodynamic performance decreases with size, and so to compensate small animals have to flap their wings faster. Mosquitoes flap at a frequency of over 400 beats per second. Birds are more of a whump, because they beat their wings so slowly."

Being relatively large insects, bees would be expected to beat their wings rather slowly, and to sweep them across the same wide arc as other flying bugs (whose wings cover nearly half a circle). They do neither. Their wings beat over a short arc of about 90 degrees, but ridiculously fast, at around 230 beats per second. Fruit flies, in comparison, are 80 times smaller than honeybees, but flap their wings only 200 times a second.

When bees want to generate more power--for example, when they are carting around a load of nectar or pollen--they increase the arc of their wing strokes, but keep flapping at the same rate. That is also odd, Dickinson says, because "it would be much more aerodynamically efficient if they regulated not how far they flap their wings but how fast "

Honeybees' peculiar strategy may have to do with the design of their flight muscles.

"Bees have evolved flight muscles that are physiologically very different from those of other insects. One consequence is that the wings have to operate fast and at a constant frequency or the muscle doesn't generate enough power," Dickinson says.

"This is one of those cases where you can make a mistake by looking at an animal and assuming that it is perfectly adapted. An alternate hypothesis is that bee ancestors inherited this kind of muscle and now present-day bees must live with its peculiarities," Dickinson says.

How honeybees make the best of it may help engineers in the design of flying insect-sized robots: "You can't shrink a 747 wing down to this size and expect it to work, because the aerodynamics are different," he says. "But the way in which bee wings generate forces is directly applicable to these devices."

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The piezo-electric actuator proposed requires microscopic levels of power to create a large physical shift of angle. A set of wings being rotated in the figure 8 vortex generator mode is what is being explored. Have you ever flown one? I doubt it, DJI tends to be the hobbiest supplier and they are not even close to high efficiency systems - they are into bilking the public for the next FAD. - drones in the Netherlands - http://www.drone.aeret.nl/

Can't help but be reminded of the, Dune poisonous dart scene.

Funny that DARPA should be showing 'mosquitoes'

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NHL31-E4eXI

Quote:

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Posted by Operator

I guess most of you have seen this youtube video already ?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM

I think the presentation itself is fake but nevertheless it is a wet dream of the MIC/Law Enforcement. And the technology is available ...
Scary world we live in ... (technology AND the psychos) :( :loco: :facepalm:

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Just for clarification: Yes, it's a short (but very well-done!) 2017 film called Slaughterbots. It's not a real presentation. The film was designed to be both thought-provoking and alarming.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterbots

It is just sickening all those weapons and spyware with technologies they create. Well, they dont really need the moquitous drones anyways, spraying chemtrails all over the place...which we breath in, which is going into our grounds and waters and ends up in whatever we eat later on........ And I think by now, there is way better spyware already than littel guys like this also...... Thinking of all those ET-technologies they have today already.

And Bob, yes possible the video I posted are not correctly and partly maybe nonsense. I just looked for some older ones...to demonstrate how long this subject is around already. Sorry, if my knowledge about the technolgies being used is not the best one.......:o

http://chanlo.com/images/metafly.gif

Note the movement of the wings - it's using the figure 8 insect vortex model discussed above in this thread.

It flies quite well. For those "drone enthusiasts" that don't believe that insect-like flight works, is bull*** and impossible.. (tell that to Leonardo DaVinci after he built his ornithopter..), the vortex inducing wing flight system is more efficient than that "propeller" quad/octa multiple-engine-propeller system.. (and this thing is QUIET, not like the annoying hum/buzz of a multi-motor drone)..

It's called "Meta-Fly", a bio-mimetic flying machine - it shows and effectively demonstrates that the action of the wing induced vortices can indeed allow for highly maneuverable flight.

It is not a super miniature "mosquito-sized" military vehicle, but something that regular engineers developed and are crowdfunding into a commercial hobbiest "amusement".

How this was developed by hobbiests (not the military) -

http://chanlo.com/images/metafly-timeline.png

ref: https://newatlas.com/metafly-flying-model-insect/58765/

"Forget the noisy vertical propellers and multiple engines - fly something that is FUN ! "

https://youtube.com/watch?v=r_1er08Tt-0

I must improve my ‘swatting’ techniques - ahaa, the ‘electric tennis racquet’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-killing_device
Or... mozzienets all around. Ridiculous, farcical, unbelievable, but sickeningly real...:facepalm: