A new research project funded by DARPA, the United States military’s experimental technology arm, has developed an autonomous drone made out of cardboard that can fly twice the distance of any fixed-range aircraft because it’s disposable. The drone only goes one way.
“When transporting vaccines or other medical supplies, the more you can pack onto the drone, the more relief you can supply,” said Star Simpson, an aeronautics research engineer at Otherlab, the group that’s building the new paper drone. If you don’t haul batteries for a return trip, you can pack more onto the drone, says Simpson.
The autonomous disposable paper drone flies like a glider, meaning it has no motor on board. It does have a small computer, as well as sensors that are programmed to adjust the aircraft’s control surfaces, like on its wings or rudder, that determine where the aircraft will travel and land.
The research and development of the paper aircraft is funded through DARPA’s Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems program, or ICARUS, which seeks to develop “vanishing” aircraft that “can make precise deliveries of critical supplies and vaporize into thin air,” according to DARPA’s project description.
Since these autonomous gliders don’t have a motor, they need to be launched from a moving aircraft, like a plane. But rather than being dropped from a plane with a parachute, the paper glider designed by Otherlab flies on its own exactly to the location it’s programmed to reach.
Otherlab is also collaborating with a biology research firm to experiment with building the drone out of a mushroom-based material that can biodegrade, says Simpson.
ICARUS is part of DARPA’s larger Vanishing Programmable Resources initiative, which funds research into hardware that can dissolve and become unusable when triggered.
Source: recode