Replacing the Natural World: with DARPA's Hummingbird & Sea Creature Sensors

Using bio-mimicry DARPA is transforming the world one element at a time from fish to hummingbirds, turning them into drones and sensors.

In 2005, DARPA announced the Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) program and its goal to develop agile and flyers system that could fit in one hand. This video chronicles the development of a "hummingbird" flyer by Aerovironment from concept to prototype demonstration and introduction to the public.

A number of difficult design and engineering challenges were overcome in the course of the program, particularly in the wing structure, propulsion and control actuators. Numerous complete prototypes were built and tested to assess and improve the performance of the systems shown in the video.

The final prototype achieves the noteworthy milestone of 2-wing flapping hovering and fast forward flight with all power sources on the aircraft and all controls implemented through modulation of the wing strokes in a shape that resembles a real hummingbird and carries and on-board camera that relays video to the pilot in real time.

Under the sea ocean creatures are being replaced using bio-mimicry in the PALS Program. 

The Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) program aims to leverage biology to augment the Department of Defense’s existing, hardware-based maritime monitoring capabilities. The program will tap into marine organisms’ innate abilities to sense and respond to perturbations in their environments and apply those abilities to the detection, characterization, and reporting of manned or unmanned underwater vehicles ranging from small autonomous vessels to large nuclear submarines. Because marine organisms are ubiquitous in their environments, self-replicating, and largely self-sustaining, sensing systems that use marine organisms as their foundation would be discreet, cost-effective, and provide persistent undersea surveillance with a minimal logistical footprint.

The complete PALS system discriminates between target vehicles and other sources of stimuli, such as debris and other marine organisms, to limit the number of false positives. By teaming marine organisms with distributed detection systems, PALS aims to greatly extend the lifetime and range of undersea surveillance capabilities.

Next week I begin my new video series on breaking new DARPA technology and how it will impact your life in real-time.

Until then-God bless each of you and stay safe,

~Celeste