AeroVironment, an engineering firm, is designing and developing a flying robot that resembles a hummingboard. The U.S. Defense Department Advanced Reasearch Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded AeroVironment a 2.1 million dollar contract for the robot, which has small wings that allow it to hover and fly up, down and sideways. The goal of the design is to allow the robot to conduct reconnaissance missions in urban environments.

See a demo of the company’s robotic aircraft on YouTube:

The tweenbot is a cute little robot with a cardboard body which NYU art student Kacie Kinzer conceived of as an experiment in the kindness of strangers. The tweenbot is equipped with a flag stating its intended destination. It can only move forward and can’t anticipate or avoid obstacles, so it depends on passerbys to set it back on course when it gets stuck. The results of the experiment were suprising.

Read more about the experiment on the Tweenbot website.