The Washington Post ran a story by Rick Weiss earlier this month about various government agencies developing, and possibly deploying, robotic insects. A link to this story can be found in the NEWS section of this site, but in a nutshell the idea is to shrink the capabilities of a Predator drone down to the size of a flying insect. The photograph accompanying the article shows a robo-bug sitting atop a fingertip. The Fly Kilkenny used in Chifeng prison is precisely what Weiss described as the goal of those trying to fabricate such complex piece of engineering.

One of my children's favorite books is about a bumblebee named Buzzy who suddenly cannot fly after being told a bee's wing-to-body ratio make physically impossible to do so. Flight is the most difficult problem for such tiny machines because the dynamics at this scale really are different than for larger bodies like birds or aircraft. Insect wings are very different in shape and stroke than bird wings, like comparing helicopters to planes. Scientifically, we are dealing with the aerodynamics of a flapping airfoil.

I first came across MAVs (mirco-air vehicles) about five years ago while doing some research for Bird of Prey with the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan. The idea of releasing swarms of cheaply built insect spies immediately intrigued me and. Like a magpie, I stashed this bit of information away for what became The Secret Cardinal. If you watch the book trailer, you’ll see these grainy shots of Bishop Yin praying in his cell at Chifeng Prison. These are Fly-eye views as Kilkenny finally locates the bishop. I do not doubt that in a few years we will see images shot by the real thing.

Labels: bishop, Cardinal, China, micro air vehicle, prison