REAL LIFE NEWS: DISPOSABLE DELIVERY DRONES
by Hazed
Using drones for delivery may still be problematical in a crowded city, but it’s a good way of moving goods in places where the road infrastructure is poor or non-existent – like the medical supplies being delivered by drone in Rwanda I told you about a few weeks ago.
But making the delivery by drone is one thing. The problem is, how do you get the drone back again?
Well, DARPA (the Pentagon’s mad scientist unit) has decided not to bother about that limitation and instead it is developing disposable drones made of cardboard.
The ICARUS program was announced in 2015. It stands for Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems. The idea is to develop small single-use aircraft that can be deployed from larger planes to carry supplies to isolated locations – and then disappear.
The agency has given funding to a research team at Otherlab in San Francisco to develop a cardboard glider. The resulting aircraft can be deployed by the hundreds from a cargo plane, and then they will glide up to 55 miles away from the drop point before circling in to make a precise landing.
Once their cargo has been delivered, the biodegradable drones disintegrate in a matter of days. Since the craft are gliders, they don’t have any motors or rotors – just electronic components which are also designed to self-destruct, thanks to an earlier DARPA program aiming to stop military gear from falling into enemy hands.
The current models carry 2.2 lbs (1 kg) but the developers think they can be scaled up to ten times that capacity.
