When size is a factor, surveillance robots generally seem to fall into one of two categories: small enough to perform relevant tasks but still be portable, or absolutely as small as possible. Meso-scale is one step above the as small as possible MAVs, but significantly smaller than most conventional robots. The compromise is designed to allow for favorable scaling and low costs, and back in 1999 Stanford took a crack at developing a centimeter scale rotary surveillance platform called the Mesicopter.

Although part of Stanford’s funding came from DARPA, their conception for the Mesicopter was more for environmental surveillance than tactical surveillance. For example, swarms of these low cost and low weight robots would be ideal for collecting atmospheric data, or exploring Mars. The Mesicopter was designed to use a lithium ion battery with an energy density of 130 mWh/g, which would have given the prototype a flight time of 30 minutes. However, the propellers didn’t end up being quite efficient enough, and although the Mesicopter was able to lift itself using off-board power, it ultimately wasn’t strong enough to lift its own batteries.