Spy seeds

The next time you tiptoe through the tulips, keep an eye out for rocket-assisted sycamore seeds. Apparently this is the latest cunning idea from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Last August, DARPA asked US defence contractors to start thinking about "Nano Aerial Vehicles", or NAVs, which should be no more than 5 centimetres wide, weigh less than 10 grams, and ought to be capale of carrying a 2-gram payload. Now, according to details released here, Lockheed Martin has just received $1.7 million from DARPA to develop a NAV "similar in size and shape" to a sycamore - or maple - seed. The idea? A tiny rocket enclosed in its one-bladed wing would project the machine up to 1 kilometre, and it would then perform a slow helicopter-like descent, filming targets all the while. Neither DARPA nor Lockheed Martin have been able to confirm the project or provide any further details. But I spoke to Darryll Pines of DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office last year and he told me that most NAVs should be able to flying unobtrusively around buildings, through open windows and even deep inside caves. No prizes for guessing who they're looking for there, then. Other researchers are already on the case though: the magnificent ProxFlyer looks a great miniature helicopter, and Ron Fearing’s Micromechanical Flying Insect project looks promising, too.