Discovery News reports on “Tiny flying Web server set to swarm.”

(Thanks, Jim!)

A tiny helicopter that serves up a Web page over a wireless network has been made by UK scientists using off-the-shelf hardware.

The 70-gram prototype, is the first in a group of flying computers that are planned to one day combine swarm intelligence, the ability to maneuver like a flock of birds, and wireless computing, to process information the way cluster-based supercomputers do.

“This would mean you could process data within the swarm that would be impossible for a single aircraft to do,” says Professor Owen Holland of the University of Essex who heads the team who developed the prototype called UltraSwarm.