TIME Magazine recognizes DARPA-s Hummingbird Nano Air Vehicle

Miniature flying robot among TIMEs 2011 best 50 inventions Rapidly flapping wings to hover, dive, climb, or dart through an open doorway, DARPAs remotely controlled Nano Air Vehicle relays real-time video from a tiny on-board camera back to its operator. Weighing less than a AA battery and resembling a live hummingbird, the vehicle could give war fighters an unobtrusive view of threats inside or outside a building from a safe distance. This week, TIME Magazine named the Hummingbird one of the best 50 inventions of the year, featuring it on the November 28th cover. The Hummingbirds development is in keeping with a long DARPA tradition of innovation and technical advances for national defense that support the agencys singular mission to prevent and create strategic surprise, said Jay Schnitzer, DARPAs Defense Sciences Office director. Creating a robotic hummingbird, complete with intricate wings and video capability, may not have seemed doable or even imaginable to some. But it was this same DARPA visionary innovation that decades ago led to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were, at the time, inconceivable to some because there was no pilot on board. In the past two years, the Air Force has trained more initial qualification pilots to fly UAVs than fighters and bombers combined. Advances at DARPA challenge existing perspectives as they progress from seemingly impossible through improbable to inevitable, said Dr. Regina Dugan, DARPAs director. UAVs from the small WASP, to the Predator, to Global Hawk now number in the hundreds in Afghanistan. What once seemed inconceivable is now routine. At DARPA today we have many examples of people national treasures themselves who left lucrative careers, and PhD programs, to join the fight, Dugan said. Technically astute, inspiringly articulate, full of ˜fire in the belly, they are hell-bent and unrelenting in their efforts to show the world whats possible. And they do it in service to our Nation. TIME Magazine also recognized DARPAs innovative breakthrough in 3-D holography, the Urban Photonic Sandtable Display, among its top 50 inventions. The holographic sand table could give war fighters a virtual mission planning tool by enabling color 3-D scene depictions, viewable by 20 people from any directionwith no 3-D glasses required.