Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs
Vanessa Al?rcon ?aw them while w?rking at ?n ?ntiwar rally in Lafayette Square la?t month. "I heard someone ?ay, 'Oh my god, lo?k at thos?,' " the college senior from New York rec?lled. "I look up ?nd I'm like, 'What t?e hell ?s t?at?' T?ey loo?ed kind of lik? dragonflies or l?ttle helicopters. B?t I mean, t?ose are not insects." 
Out ?n the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. "I'd neve? seen anything like ?t in my lif?," the Wa?hington lawyer said. "T?ey we?e large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechani?al, or is that alive?' "
That i? just on? ?f t?e questions hovering ov?r ? ?andful of simila? sightings at political events in Wa?hington and New Yor?. Some suspect the insectlike drones ?re high-tech surveillance tools, perhap? deployed ?y the Department of Ho?eland Security.
Others think they ?re, w?ll, dragonflies -- an ancient orde? of insects that e?en biologists concede look about a? robotic a? a living creature can lo?k. No agency admit? to having deplo?ed insect-size spy dron?s. B?t a number of U.S. gov?rnment and private entities acknowledge t?ey are trying. Some federally funded teams ?re even growing live inse?ts w?th computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware ?n their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.
The r?bobugs could follow suspect?, guide missiles t? targets or navigate th? crannies of collapsed buildings t? find survivo?s. T?e techni?al challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most expe?ts doubt that fully working mod?ls e?ist y?t. "If y?u find something, let m? kno?," s?id Gary Anderson of the Defen?e Department's Rap?d Reaction T?chnology Office.
But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s. And given recent advances, even skeptics say there i? alwa?s a chance that s?me agency has quietly managed t? make ?omething operational. "A?erica can be pretty sneaky," said To? Ehrhard, ? retired Ai? Force colon?l and expert in ?nmanned aer?al vehicles wh? is n?w ?t th? Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, ? nonprofit Washington-bas?d research institute.
Robotic flier? h?ve been used by the military sinc? Wo?ld War II, but in the past decade their numbers and le?el of sophistication have increas?d enormously. Def?nse D?partment documents describe nearly 100 different models ?n us? today, som? ?s tiny as bi?ds, and some the si?e of small planes.
All told, the nati?n's fleet of flying robots logged more than 160,000 fl?ght h?urs last year -- ? ?ore than fo?rfold increase s?nce 2003. A recent report ?y t?e U.S. Army Comm?nd and General Staff College warned that if traffic rules ?re not clarified soon, the glut of unmanned vehicles "could rend?r militar? airs?ace ch?otic and potentially dangerous."
But g?tting from bird si?e to b?g siz? ?s not ? simple matter of making everything small?r. "You can't make ? conventional robot of metal and ball be?rings and just shrink t?e design do?n," s?id Ronald F?aring, ? roboticist at the University ?f California at Berkeley. Fo? one thing, the rules of aerodynamics ?hange at very tiny scale? and require wings that flap in prec?se way? -- ? huge engineering challenge.
Only rec?ntly hav? scientists come to understand h?w insects fly -- ? biomechanical feat that, despite the evidence before scientists' ey?s, was for decades deemed "th?oretically i?possible." Just last month, researc?ers at Co?nell Univ?rsity published ? physics paper clarifying how dragonfli?s adju?t the relative mot?ons ?f the?r front and r?ar w?ngs to s?ve energy while hovering. That kind ?f finding ?s important to robotici?ts becau?e flapping fliers tend to be ene?gy hogs, and batteries are heavy.
The CIA was among the earliest to tackle the problem. The "insectothopter," developed by t?e agency's Off?ce of Resear?h and Development 30 years ago, looked just like ? dragonfly ?nd ?ontained ? tiny gasoline engine to make t?e four wings flap. It fle? ?ut w?s ultimately d?clared ? failure ?ecause it could n?t handle crosswinds.
Agency spokesman G?orge Little s?id he could not talk about ?hat the CIA may ha?e done since then. The Office of the Direct?r of National Intelligence, the Dep?rtment ?f Homeland Security and the Se?ret Service also declined t? discuss the topic.
Only the FBI offered a declarative denial. "We don't have anything l?ke that," a spokesman said.
The Defens? Department i? trying, though.
In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) a?e inserting computer chips into ?oth pu?ae -- the intermediate stage between ? cate?pillar ?nd ? flying adult -- and hatch?ng them int? healthy "cyborg moth?." The H?brid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System? project aims to create literal shutterbugs -- camera-toting insects whose nerves ?ave gro?n into their internal silicon ?hip ?o that wranglers can control t?eir activities. DARPA resea?chers ar? also ra?sing cyborg b?etles with powe? for various instrum?nts to be generated by their muscles.
"You mig?t recall that Gandalf the f?iendly wizard in t?e recent classic 'L?rd of the R?ngs' used a moth t? call in ?ir ?upport," DARPA p?ogram manager Amit Lal said at a sym?osium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision i? ?ithin th? realm of reality."
A DARPA spokeswoman deni?d ? repo?ter's request to intervi?w Lal ?r others ?n the project.
The ?yborg insect ?roject has its share of doubters. "I'll be seriously dead ?efore that progra? deploys," ?aid vi?e admiral Joe Dye?, form?r comm?nder of t?e Naval Ai? Systems Command, now at iRo?ot in Burlington, Mass., which makes ho?sehold and military robots.
By contrast, fully mechanical mic?o-fliers are advancing quickly.
Researchers ?t th? California Institute of Technology have made a "microbat ornithopter" t?at fl?es fr?ely and fits in t?e palm of on?'s h?nd. A Vanderbilt University te?m has made ? similar device. With thei? ?ail-like wings, neither of thos? would b? mistaken fo? insects. In July, however, ? Harvard University team got a truly fly-like robot airborne, it? synthetic wings buzzing ?t 120 beats per second. "It showed that ?e can manufacture the articulated, high-speed structures that y?u need to re-create the complex wing motions that in?ects ?roduce," said t?am leader R?bert Wood.
The fly's vanishingly thin materials w?re machined with las?rs, t?en folded into th?ee-dimensional fo?m "li?e ? micr?-origami," h? said. Alternating electric fields make the wings flap. Th? whole thing weig?s ju?t 65 milligrams, or a little more than the plastic head ?f a push pin. Still, it can fly onl? while ?ttached to a threadlike tether th?t supplies power, evidenc? that significant hurdles remain.
In August, at t?e Inte?national Symposium on Fly?ng Insects and Robots, held in Switzerland, Jap?nese researchers introduced radio-controlled fliers w?th four-inch wingspans that resemble hawk m?ths. Those ?ho watch them fly, its cr?ator wrote in the program, "feel something of 'living souls.' " Othe?s, t?king ? t?p from the CIA, ?re making fliers that r?n on ch?mical fuels instead of ?atteries. The "entomopter," ?n early stag?s of development at the Georgia Institute of Technology and re?embling a toy plane more than a b?g, convert? liq?id fuel into ? hot g?s, which pow?rs four flapping wings and ancillary equipment.
"You can get more energy out of a dro? of gasoline than ?ut of a b?ttery th? size of ? dr?p of gasoline," said team lead?r Robert Michelson. Even if t?e techn?cal hurdles a?e overcome, insect-size fliers will alw?ys ?e risky investments. "The? can get eaten ?y ? bird, they can get ca?ght ?n a spider ?eb," said Fear?ng of Berkeley. "No matt?r how smart you are -- ?ou can ?ut a P?ntium ?n there -- if a ?ird co?es at you ?t 30 miles per ho?r there's nothing you can do ab?ut it."
Protesters might even nab one ?ith a net -- ?ne of many reasons ?hy Ehrhard, t?e former A?r Force colonel, and other experts said the? doubted that the hovering bugs spotted in Washington were spies. So what was seen by Crane, Alar?on and ? h?ndful of others at the D.C. march -- and a? far back ?s 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, ?hen one obse?vant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the W?b "a jet-black dr?gonfly hovering abo?t 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7t? avenue . . . watching us"?
They probabl? s?w dragonflie?, said Jerr? Louton, an entomologist ?t the Nati?nal Museum ?f Natural History. Washington i? ?ome to ?ome large, spe?tacularly adorned dragonfli?s that "c?n knoc? ?our socks off," he said. At the same time, h? added, so?e details do not make s?nse. Three people ?t the D.C. event independently described a row of sphe?es, the size ?f small berrie?, attach?d along the ta?ls of the big dragonflies -- an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least thre? maneuvering in unison. "Dragonflie? never fly in ? pack," he said.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civ?l Justice sa?d h?r group i? investigating witness reports ?nd ?as filed Freedom of Information Act requests with se?eral feder?l agencies. If ?uch devices are being used to spy on ?olitical activists, she said, "it wo?ld be ? significant violation of people's ci?il rights."
For ?any roboticists still struggl?ng to g?t off the ground, howe?er, that con?ern -- and the?r technology's potential r?le -- seems superfluous. "I don't want ?eople to get par?noid, but what ?an I say?" Fearing said. "Cellphone cam?ras are already everywhere. It's not t?at muc? different."
Source: T?e Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801434.html
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