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The Butterfly like flying camera hovered over my head in the big hangar at the Israel aerospace (IAI) facilities but it took me some minutes to see it and that after one of the operators directed me to where it hovered near the ceiling.
The miniature UAS imitates the motions of a butterfly’s wings. The prototype that i saw is 20 cm long and weighs 12 grams. It flies by flapping its 4 wings.
The prototype is part of an overall effort to develop covert miniature UAS for Special Forces.
An IAI source said that the prototype is test flown with a camera that weighs less than 1m gram.
IAI plans to offer a line of miniature UAS equipped with different payloads.
This development effort is highly classified but we can learn about the trends in “Bug” style flying cameras mainly by watching the activity in the U.S.
Other countries have been developing those ” Bug” style flying cameras.
The 18-gram PD-100 Black Hornet from Norway’s Prox Dynamics can bear regular and thermal cameras about a kilometer and stay aloft more than 25 minutes.
It’s launched from a small box that straps to a utility belt, which is also where the data is stored, as opposed to on the drone itself, in case it’s captured. The video feeds directly to a small, chest-mounted screen. The operator steers it forward, backward, up and down with a video game-like one-handed controller, or sets waypoints to allow the drone to fly itself.
The PD-100 has been in operational use for three years, including wide use by British Brigade Reconnaissance Force in Afghanistan.
