The future of hard-to-detect drone surveillance will mimic nature. The dragonfly "insect spy" drone is old, but bug-sized microdrones with flapping wings are still considered the future. The U.S. is not alone in miniaturizing drones that imitate nature; France has flapping wing bio-inspired microdrones and the Netherlands BioMAV ,Biologically Inspired A.I. for Micro Aerial Vehicles.
John Hopkins University said i"butterfly research will aid the development of flying bug-size robots" and showed off this "insect-inspired flapping-wing MAV under development at Harvard University." That looks a great deal like the "fly drone" yet again, only this time compared to a penny. Are they commonly used and we just don't know it? The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation funded the insect flight dynamics research, so John Hopkins reseachers have turned to studying even smaller MAV bugs like fruit flies.
The University of Pennsylvania GRASP Lab showed off drones that swarm, a network of 20 nano quadrotors flying in synchronized formations. Engadget called them "four-bladed aerial ninjas," but the SWARMS goal is to combine swarm technology with bio-inspired drones to operate "with little or no direct human supervision" in "dynamic, resource-constrained, adversarial environments."