Someday Disposable Drones May Deliver A Payload, Then Vanish
March 2, 20177:01 AM ET
Lucia Maffei
Otherlab is among the companies working with DARPA on prototypes for disposable drones.
Courtesy of Otherlab
An aircraft flying at night drops a flock of unpowered drones. They carry food, medicines and batteries. After delivering their load on the ground, the drones vaporize into thin air within hours.
Disposable drones that can make precise deliveries before vanishing may look like a product of Stark Industries. But the fictional giant of military technology run by Tony "Iron Man" Stark has nothing to do with them. Instead, the development of "disappearing delivery vehicles" is a project by DARPA, the Department of Defense's research and development agency.
DARPA, officially called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is working with several companies in the field of ephemeral materials to achieve a prototype.
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/03/02/517043932/someday-disposable-drones-may-deliver-their-load-then-vanish
