IT鈥橲 alive! Well, almost. The first 鈥渂iological drone鈥�, an autonomous vehicle stitched together largely with materials from living things, made its inaugural flight earlier this month.
Drones have proved invaluable for those who want to explore remote locations, from storm-chasers to the military. But a crash in such a location can not only blot a sensitive environment, it also lets everyone know that you鈥檝e been spying. A bio-drone could potentially avoid that by degrading away in a puddle of inconspicuous goo.
鈥淣o one would know if you鈥檇 spilled some sugar water or if there鈥檇 been an airplane there,鈥� says Lynn Rothschild of NASA鈥檚 Ames Research Center in California, who led .
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聯No one would know if you鈥檇 spilled some sugar water or if there had been an airplane there聰
The bulk of the prototype is made of a root-like fungal material called mycelium. It was cultivated in a custom drone shape by , a company in Green Island, New York, that grows the stuff as a lightweight sustainable alternative for applications like wine packaging and surfboard cores.
The fungal body has a protective covering of sticky cellulose 鈥渓eather鈥� sheets grown by bacteria in the lab. Coating the sheets are proteins cloned from the saliva of paper wasps 鈥� usually used to waterproof their nests. Circuits were printed in silver nanoparticle ink, in an effort to make the device as biodegradable as possible.
鈥淭here are definitely parts that can鈥檛 be replaced by biology,鈥� says team member Raman Nelakanti of Stanford University. For example, for its first short flight at the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Boston, the bio-drone was equipped with propellers and controls borrowed from a regular mechanical quadcopter. It also has a standard battery.
The next part the team hope to make safe to degrade are the drone鈥檚 sensors, and they have already started studying how to build them using E. coli bacteria.
Ella Atkins, an aerospace engineer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is enthusiastic about the bio-drones but warns of trouble if one starts to break down too soon. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want biodegradable drones to rain down from the sky and we don鈥檛 want to litter the land and seas with crashed drones even if they will eventually biodegrade,鈥� she says.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淏io-drone simply melts away when it crashes鈥�
