LONDON (AFP) - British scientists say they are studying the flight of bees to see whether a tiny plane could be built with flappable wings for military or industrial spying.
"Researchers here are quite confident that they can solve the aerodynamics problems," said Tony Trueman, a spokesman for Bath University, in south-west England, adding that spy cameras and computers small enough to equip an insect were already within reach.
The university has received a 650,000-pound (910,000 euros, 1.15 million dollars) grant from BAE Systems, the British government and the US Air Force, and "in around the next 18 months the project will be finished," Trueman said.
He said the military could use insect-sized drones for "the sensing of chemical and biological weapons, but they are not likely to be used directly as weapons," because they would be too small to carry a bomb.
They could, however, "land on the roof of enemy vehicles and mark them for future attack."
Civil authorities might use them for "traffic monitoring, border surveillance, fire and rescue operation, wildlife survey, substance detection like in a sort of nuclear accident," he said, adding: "You can send these into the building."
The head of the aerospace subgroup at the university's department of mechanical engineering, Ismet Gursul, said: "We're looking for the most efficient way of flying, and the rapid flapping of a flexible wing is one of these."
"Other scientists must come up with a method of miniaturising the computer hardware and software, so one would be able to put on to the plane, so the plane can fly in an intelligent way, so it doesn't strike objects," he said.
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