According to foreign media reports, one day in the future, the sky will rain. They can float gently in the air when collecting environmental data, land on the ground, and decompose after completing their work. This is the future seen by a group of engineers. They call it "micro flying wing chip", and its design is inspired by nature.

John Rogers, co-author of a paper on micro air vehicles published in Nature this week, said: "Our goal is to add flying wings to small-scale electronic systems. The idea is that these capabilities will enable us to distribute high-function microelectronic devices to sense environmental pollution monitoring, population monitoring or disease tracking.

Northwest University's video about microchips emphasizes how small they are. The video shows the structure of such chips and what they look like when flying.

The wing-like and propeller-like design of microchips means that they can descend slowly and ride the wind. This gives them a lot of time to collect data during the descent. According to the team, they can be equipped with micro sensors, antennas and even data storage.

In recent years, nature has proved its inspiration for various engineering projects, from octopus-like tentacles to cicada drones. Engineers developed the design of this micro air vehicle by studying the properties of seeds scattered with the wind. Clover and its star-shaped seeds have proved to be a good model of electronic equipment.

Rogers said: "We think we have defeated nature. At least in a narrow sense, we have been able to build a structure with a more stable trajectory and a slower terminal speed than the same seeds you see from plants or trees. "

It is reported that Rogers and his team are studying micro air vehicles made of water-soluble materials, which provides an ingenious solution to the problem of cleaning up electronic waste.