The U.S. Navy is testing tiny robot drones that fly in swarms like cicadas to collect data. The CICADs - or'close-in covert autonomous disposable aircrafts - are designed to be cheap enough that a bunch can be dropped simultaneously from the sky and even into storm conditions like hurricanes. The Naval Research Lab has been working on the technology in various ways since 2011, but the focus of this specific iteration - MK5 - is a shape that would allow them to be stackable. The stackable robots disperse to their own GPS coordinates to collect data. Currently, 32 can be released at once. Once landed, they send the data back to the aircraft they were dropped from.