Could a robotic dragonfly save your life?

Bart Remes and his team at the Technical University of Delft have just produced the smallest-ever flapping wing robot (ornithopter) with a built-in camera.With a wingspan of just 10 centimetres, the DelFly could easily be confused with a real dragonfly. There's a video of it in action below. The small box in the bottom righthand corner gives a DelFly's eye view of the world.The DelFly should help the researchers understand more about the aerodynamics associated with ornithopter flight, but its onboard camera suggests it could have immediate practical uses too. A swarm of the cheap fliers could quickly bring back footage from a wide area after, say, an earthquake.But taking the DelFly out of the lab and into the real world might generate its own problems. As one commentator on YouTube has already pointed out: "it would probably get blown away". An even greater problem might come from predatory birds and animals.Let's hope DelFly's mission's don't put it in the path of any cats. It might suffer the fate of this larger robot dragonfly.Via Automaton