World’s first hummingbird-like unmanned aircraft system takes flight (gizmag.com)

It won't take long before this gets weaponized. Then safety as well as privacy will suffer mightily.

Anyone know its battery life? I'd think at least 20 minutes of flight time would be needed to take this from expensive cat-toy to a surveillance tool.

That is the first ornithopter that I've seen that seems to demonstrate flying capabilities similar to those of birds - something which might be very -other than- only for the curiosity of a plane that flies by flapping its wings. Color me excited.

Real hummingbirds are the most energy intensive birds. They have a very low margin for error, a few hours without feeding at best.

http://www.blurtit.com/q890088.html

"A 4-gram hummingbird has a basic metabolic rate of 1,400 calories per gram. In repose, a hummingbird's metabolism rate is 25 times that of a domestic fowl. If a person had such a high metabolic rate, he would have to eat twice his body weight daily, his temperature would be 750 degrees F, and he would consume 155,000 calories per day."

It's probably marginally better than helicopters.

I think it's neat how, at times in the second video, the wings are phased with the camera, so it looks like they are completely stationary.