Recent news items herald the incredible return on investment the Ukrainian army is getting from its use of small cardboard aircraft. These literally boxy bombers are doing in Russian aircraft and possibly tanks with surprising capability. They may have had an initial inspiration in 2017. Everfly, Otherlab, and Star Simpson At the 2017 Sustainable Aviation Symposium in San Francisco, Star Simpson of Everfly, an affiliate of Otherlab, showed off a cardboard drone intended for humanitarian missions. Read about the craft, its many acronym-related affiliations, and its missions here. Ukrainians and Their Cardboard Air Force On a less humane, but equally important mission, an Australian version of the “pizza-box” technology is wreaking havoc on the Russian Air Force and even Russian tanks. The Sydney (Australia) Daily Herald reported on August 29, “Australian-made cardboard drones have been reportedly used to help bomb a Russian airfield as the Ukrainian military steps up its attacks on Russian territory.” According to the report, Sypaq drones …
Otherlab’s Cardboard Drone – “A Pizza Box… Shaped into a Wing”
A disposable drone that will make a one-way trip to a disaster area won’t add to the suffering if it dissolves within a few weeks of delivering its life-saving cargo. That’s the promise of the “Aerial Platform Supporting Autonomous Resupply Actions” (APSARA), currently being developed by Otherlab, a San Francisco-based group specializing in next-generation creations. Funded by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), APSARA is part of their ICARUS program (Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems). The acronyms are becoming overwhelming. Disposable medical supplies are a commonplace in today’s clinics and hospitals. A recent chat with a nurse elicited her concern that medical supplies were so readily disposable. Latex or nitrile gloves, single-use syringes, and protective paper covers and wraps make up a considerable amount of medical waste each year. The materials have the benefit of being inexpensive, though. That’s part of the thinking behind APSARA. Instead of a costly powered drone that would represent a significant loss if it …
Burrito Bombing – A Kinder, Gentler UAV Use
An engineering threesome apparently not finding a sense of accomplishment in their daily routine, have developed an integrated hardware and software system to deliver hot burritos in the time it takes to fly them to a customer. Quadrotors are being tested and used for an amazing range of tasks, including taking medicine and other humanitarian deliverables to remote villages and finding hostages while providing tactical intelligence to ground forces. The hope of tacos being delivered to San Francisco Bay area residents, as advertised on a web site listing itself as a “private beta” link was busted as a hoax by Christina Bonnington of Wired. She wrote that TacoCopter was the brainchild of, “Star Simpson, an MIT grad who stumbled into the limelight in 2007 after being arrested for wearing a hoax explosive device comprised of a circuit board and green LEDs.” This was after 14,000 “likes” on Wired’s Facebook page and 4,000 tweets excited about the possibility of tacos from the sky. But who …