These Flying Robot Flies Will Haunt You [VIDEO]

Kevin Ma/Pakpong ChirarattananonInsects are the most mystifying flying creatures on earth. They can hover, easily move in any direction, and artfully but maddeningly dodge a fly swatter.

And they have inspired a group of engineers to build the world's smallest and most agile flying robots.

Kevin Ma is a robot scientist at Harvard, and he and his colleagues have built a small insect-like device that can mimic both the size and many of the same flight patterns of flies.

The tiny robots were announced Thursday, May 2, in the journal Science.

Better, it doesn't bite or sting.

About the size of a quarter, the robot was inspired by flies (though the researchers have dubbed them "RoboBees.") They are about the size of a paperclip, weigh less than a tenth of a gram, and can flap their see-through wings at up to 120 times per second.

See the robots in action (skip to 40 seconds in), and get more info on how they work, in the video below: