http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/hummingbird_flies/

Amazing news from the world of tiny robot spy ornithopters today,
as developers have announced successful flight trials of the tiny robot spy
ornithopter "Hummingbird" prototype – so named perhaps because it is roughly the
size of a hummingbird, weighs as much as a hummingbird and looks like a horse
... no, sorry, like a hummingbird.

The diminutive flapping-wing spybot was made by famous Californian crazy tech
company AeroVironment. It has a wingspan of 16cm and weighs just 19 grammes,
which is "less than the weight of a common AA battery", AeroVironment says. The
little machine also comes with "a removable body fairing, which is shaped to
have the appearance of a real hummingbird".

The company says that these specs are a little larger and heavier than an
average hummingbird, but there are species of hummingbird which are bigger.

Like its flesh-and-blood namesake, the little ornithopter is capable of
maintaining a sustained hover as well as forward flight, and is highly
manoeuvrable in tight spaces. It is quite capable of flying into a building
through a normal-sized door and then moving about within, controlled by an
operator using only the video feed from the machine's tiny vidcam.

http://www.avinc.com/nano

The Nano Hummingbird met all, and exceeded many, of the Phase II technical
milestones set out by DARPA:

* Demonstrate precision hover flight.

* Demonstrate hover stability in a wind gust flight which required the aircraft
to hover and tolerate a two-meter per second (five miles per hour) wind gust
from the side, without drifting downwind more than one meter.

* Demonstrate a continuous hover endurance of eight minutes with no external
power source.

* Fly and demonstrate controlled, transition flight from hover to 11 miles per
hour fast forward flight and back to hover flight.

* Demonstrate flying from outdoors to indoors, and back outdoors through a
normal-size doorway.

* Demonstrate flying indoors 'heads-down' where the pilot operates the aircraft
only looking at the live video image stream from the aircraft, without looking
at or hearing the aircraft directly.

* Fly the aircraft in hover and fast forward flight with bird-shaped body and
bird-shaped wings.