A new computer chip, smaller than a US dime and shown here with a quarter for scale, helps miniature drones navigate in flight. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has upgraded the design of a computer chip developed last year to help honeybee-sized drones navigate.

The newly built chip, named Navion, is smaller and requires less power than its predecessor.

Navion is 20 square millimetres in size and consumes 24 milliwatts of power, which is about 1 one-thousandth of the energy required to power a lightbulb.

It can process real-time camera images at up to 171 frames per second and inertial measurements to determine its location.

The chip can also be integrated into ‘nanodrones’ as small as a fingernail, to help them navigate, particularly in remote areas where global positioning satellite data is unavailable.

“I can imagine applying this chip to low-energy robotics, like flapping-wing vehicles the size of your fingernail, or lighter-than-air vehicles like weather balloons.”

The chip has been developed by a team co-led by MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) associate professor Vivienne Sze, and MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society member Sertac Karaman.

The team has not reconfigured the existing design while building Navion.

Karaman said: “I can imagine applying this chip to low-energy robotics, like flapping-wing vehicles the size of your fingernail, or lighter-than-air vehicles like weather balloons, that have to go for months on one battery.

“Or imagine medical devices like a little pill you swallow, that can navigate in an intelligent way on very little battery so it doesn’t overheat in your body. The chips we are building can help with all of these.”

The researchers tested the chip on datasets provided by drones flying through a number of environments, including offices and warehouses to improve its capacities.

Parts of the research is supported by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and by the National Science Foundation in the US.