Learning to fly a helicopter takes hundreds of hours, and even then few pilots feel safe maneuvering one over enemy terrain or forest fires. Yet missions such as these are precisely what choppers are good for, where on-the-fly surveillance may mean the difference between life and death. It doesn´t take a genius to appreciate the potential benefits of a miniature copter, mounted with a remote-control camera, that flies itself.To build one, though, takes real ingenuity, as choppers are not inherently aerodynamic.