Meet the CIA’s robotic animal agents: Charlie the spy fish and the robo-dragonfly

The CIA recently created accounts on Flickr and YouTube. Most of what’s been uploaded is underwhelming and weirdly mundane — for example, you can learn about a satisfying career as a K-9 bomb-sniffing dog — but there are some oddly intriguing mechanical animals on display, namely the robo-fish Charlie and a “dragonfly insectothopter,” which the CIA claims was never used in the field. Click through to watch videos of these spybots in motion.

Here’s the CIA’s description of Charlie:

CIA’s Office of Advanced Technologies and Programs developed the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) fish to study aquatic robot technology. The UUV fish contains a pressure hull, ballast system, and communications system in the body and a propulsion system in the tail. It is controlled by a wireless line-of-sight radio handset.

The robot dragonfly is a super impressive piece of engineering, especially considering it was built almost 20 years ago. Makes you wonder what sort of tiny flying robots they have now that haven’t been declassified.

Via:io9

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