Ever Wanted To Be A Fly On The Wall?

Ever Wanted To Be A Fly On The Wall?

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Evolution keeps providing humanity with an infinite amount of inspiration, as human technology keeps developing products based on the final results of an improvement process which took millions of years. What’s right for natural selection must be right for mankind.

Researchers from the Swiss Technological Institution have managed to developed a kind of set of eyes designed to be placed on unmanned aerial vehicles and could provide surveillance capabilities never before witnessed in the world of UAVs.

These new cameras are based on the eyesight of insects and are so miniature that they can be installed on top a miniature aerial platform which will probably become the next generation of UAVs. The innovation in these cameras developed by the Swiss researchers is that they are nothing like the cameras we know today: Insect eyes aren’t capable of generating a high resolution vision and so their spatial movement is based on a fast reaction to chages in light and in how how they perceive bodies in the space surrounding them. The new camera will operate much the same way.

The camera is made of a lense which is put over a visual sensor in the shape of a triangle. By measuring the time of appearance of an object by each part of the triangle sensor, the UAV can calculate the object’s speed and direction. The size of this sensor is abour 2 squeare mm and only weighs 2 mg. The camera is not restricted to any specific lighting and can operate the same way in indoor lighting and exterior sunlight.

The that this robot has a completely independent reaction capability for the changing conditions mid-flight brings humanity a step closer to an age where completely autonomous robots are an everyday sight. This kind of robot, especially with it being so tiny, could be used as a fly on the wall in a way that intelligence agencies, or at least spy novels authors, have always dreamed of.

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