Robot Birds in our Future?

Robotic birds... sounds like something out of a futuristic paranoid conspiracy flick, but it could be a reality in the near future.

Ty Hedrick, an animal aerodynamics expert at the University of North Carolina and a team of biologists have developed a model for how hummingbirds turn in mid-air. Until now, this has always been a major question for scientists. This model will make it possible to create remote control robotic birds, along with many other flying robots including even insects.

The interesting thing is that the model for a hummingbird and an insect are the same, because the size of the airborne creature does not effect the ability to turn - it is the number of times that they flap their wings during a turn. By analyzing these behaviors on video, they will be able to mimic these behaviors in robotic models.

Are we going to be seeing these robotic birds and insects being used in the future? If so, are we going to be able to tell the difference between the real ones and the fake ones? Most likely, these models will be extremely expensive, but it could prove to very useful for use in the military to check dangerous or hard to reach areas.