Disposable Drones

How do you deliver medical supplies to a war zone cheaply? The answer, according to this project, might be a make a disposable drone. Created by friend of Hackaday [Star Simpson] and the Sky Machines group at Otherlab, this project is looking to make drones out of cheap biodegradable products like cardboard. Rather than risk an expensive drone that might never return, the project imagines a drone that flies to the target, delivers its cargo with an accuracy of about 10 meters and then be easily disposed of. The prototype the team is working on is part of a DARPA project called Inbound, Controlled Air-Releasable Unrecoverable Systems (ICARUS) and is a glider designed to be released from a plane or helicopter. Using a cheap GPS receiver and controller, the drone then glides to the destination. It’s an interesting take on the drone: making it so simple and cheap that you can use it once and throw it away. And if you want to get a feel for how [Star] and Otherlabs approach problems like this, check out the awesome talk that [Star] gave at our recent Superconference on making beautiful circuit boards.

Thanks for the tip, [Andrew]!