MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-02-06 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] paper ramulens work for us all
|
These Paper Drones Are Built for One-Way Missions
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603552/these-paper-drones-are-built-for-one-way-missions/
The autonomous craft would be a cheap, disposable way to deliver medical
supplies in remote areas or conflict zones.
by Michael Reilly February 1, 2017
Not many people would sign up for a one-way mission—thank goodness there
are now drones to do the job for us.
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Under a grant from DARPA, San Francisco-based Otherlab has built
prototype drones out of cardboard that are designed to airdrop things
like medicine, batteries, and communication devices into dangerous or
hard-to-reach places.
The gliders are pre-programmed with their landing destination, then
launched from a cargo plane or other aircraft (in tests, one was
launched from a bigger drone). A small electronics package then steers
each craft to its target. But with no motors and no need of a battery or
fuel, they are meant to have as much room as possible for payload.
Drones have already delivered packages to paying Amazon customers and
medicine to remote parts of Rwanda. The Department of Defense, too, is
testing out drone swarms for a range of possible missions. But the idea
of completely disposable, disintegrating drones is novel. On DARPA’s
page for what it’s calling the ICARUS project, the agency states that it
wants drones that “vanish into thin air” shortly after their missions
are over.
To that end Otherlab’s Star Simpson, an engineer on the project, says
that cardboard was only used to prove the design worked. The goal is to
eventually make the drones’ bodies out of mycelium fibers—that is,
mushrooms.
As Simpson told Air & Space, “Our preliminary work on that indicated
that you can basically impregnate [mycelium] with different types of
spores [which] are activated just before the vehicle is released.” The
spores would grow and literally eat the drone, chewing through the body
in about five or six days. As for the drone’s avionics, DARPA has a
separate program funding the development of self-destructing electronics
that would dovetail nicely.
Otherlab is no stranger to pursuing out-there ideas; it's been known to
dabble in everything from renewable energy to inflatable robots. In a
press release about the project, it suggests that a C-130 military
transport plane could disperse hundreds of drones loaded with supplies
across an area the size of California in a single flight.
So far, the Otherlab team has only tested models that are built to carry
a payload of up to one kilogram, but Simpson says they could scale the
design to make a drone with an eight-foot wingspan that can haul up to
10 kilograms.
(Read more: Air & Space, Recode, “A 100-Drone Swarm, Dropped from Jets,
Plans Its Own Moves,” “Drones Set to Deliver Medicine to Remote Parts of
the U.S.,” “An Amazon Drone Has Delivered Its First Products to a Paying
Customer”)
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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