May 24, 2009 09:00 AM
21,266
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 4:23 PM
Tue Feb 9
27 posts in the last 24 hours
New miniature camera technology may be about to give the US military's insect-sized surveillance drones a new way of seeing the world that's more energy-conscious than before. Yay, technology?
New Scientist reports that a new microchip-sized digital camera, developed by the California Institute of Technology using funding from NASA and the Pentagon, has been patented and is expected to replace current camera technology on the tiny spy drones. According to the article, the revolutionary aspect of the design is that the new size means that the main power drain on existing minicams - connecting the chips for the sensors and support circuitry - is no longer necessary, making the new remote controlled camera use much less energy, and therefore be more suited for secret surveillance missions. I'm not sure how I feel about this news, not least of all because I didn't even know that the US military even had insect-sized surveillance drones before.
Spying roboflies to get minicam eyes [New Scientist]
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion