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"Evolutionary success ... is going to absolutely require mobility on, at a minimum, an interplanetary scale. We either go or we die out."
- Richard Morgan
 |
| Tiny Robot Planes | ||
| A swarm of very small independently maneuverable unmanned aerial vehicles. |
This is a very early reference to the idea of a swarm of UAVs.
| “There come bomb-planes!” Merky exclaimed. “Right out of sun!”
Amber and Barnes looked up. There was a small black speck just beyond the sun’s disc. The speck became a smudge, then expanded to a small cloud. It hurtled on down with inconceivable speed until it was visible as thousands of tiny robot planes, each one so packed with detonite that it was little more than a power-driven bomb. |
| Technovelgy from Blood on the Sun,
by Hal K. Wells. Published by Startling Stories in 1942 Additional resources -
|
There was a defense against this menace!
Every plane those beams touched exploded. The firmament seemed a solid mass of rippling flame and crashing detonations. The beams thrust with the fluid swiftness and accuracy of giant rapiers, but there were too few Ancients to hope to get every robot-bomb.
Compare to copseyes from a story by Larry Niven as well as tracer-birds from an unusual story by Roger Zelazny. As far as I know, the earliest reference to a little flying UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) is the scarab robot from a 1936 story by Raymond Z. Gallun. Also, compare it to the robot bird from Invader on My Back, by Philip E. High, published by Ace Books in 1968 and the mechanical birds from Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Either the Ancients were late in detecting the menace flashing toward them out of the fiery glare of the sun, or their weapons were designed for close range defense only. The first of the rocketing robot planes were within a few thousand feet of the crater’s floor when pale beams lanced skyward.
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Tiny Robot Planes-related
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- Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones
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| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
| DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It |
| How To Settle An Argument Between Two Robots |
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'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
