Honeywell to use plastic MEMs for UAV actuators

Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., are sponsoring a program to develop tiny arrays of smart actuators for a new generation of miniature unmanned aerial vehicles. DARPA leaders, working through the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate in Rome, N.Y., are asking engineers from the Honeywell Technology Center of Plymouth, Minn., to develop a polymer-based 3-D microelectromechanical systems (MEMs)-based microactuator array with macroscopic action. Honeywell specialists will use plastic, not the usual silicon, to build these devices. MEMS involves micromachining to create mechanically active micro structures for sensing or actuating. Essentially, they are machines on a chip. For more information, contact the Honeywell Technology Center by phone at 612-951-1000, by fax at 612-951-7438, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.htc.honeywell.com/ - J.K.