Microflyer

Spy planes that are small enough to fit in the hand could be taking to the skies within three years. Called microflyers, the planes will have a wingspan of about 15cms and weigh less than 100 grammes.

The 10-gram microflyer demonstrated autonomous operation using only visual, gyroscopic and anemometric sensors.

The ability to hover as well as fly efficiently at low speeds is crucial for a microflyer designed for indoor surveillance. Accordingly, a loarge amount of research has been focused on rotary-wing and flapping-wing microflyer configurations.

The interpolation image algorithm (I2A) combined with a 1D camera array have been used onboard an indoor microflyer.