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In the 1970s, the CIA created a robot dragonfly (2020)
Newly released documents show how the CIA created one of the world's first examples of insect robotics.
These included a listening device designed to look like tiger excrement that recorded troop movements in Vietnam, and a robot fish that collected water samples near hidden nuclear plants. Despite being a star attraction at the CIA’s museum, many details about the bug remained a secret for decades until John Greenwald, founder of the anti-secrecy website The Black Vault, put in a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the summer of 2013. "We still can’t build something as effective as a bumblebee wing which still works well even when it is damaged,” Walker says, but he points to the Skeeter drone, developed by Animal Dynamics, as a good example of how our greater understanding of biomechanics can create a true heir to the insectothopter.
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