In San Francisco, engineering lab Otherlab has created a mycelium airplane capable of delivering up to 2 lbs of aid, such as blood and vaccines, to remote regions before biodegrading.
Resembling stealth fighters, the planes are a component of Otherlab’s APSARA (Aerial Platform Supporting Autonomous Resupply Actions) system, which leverages computational design to develop affordable aerial delivery vehicles.
APSARA gliders are constructed from mycelium, a low-cost, biodegradable material engineered for aerodynamic performance and designed to break down within days.
Otherlab, however, opted to use heavy-duty cardboard as a practical substitute for testing. Each glider is equipped with self-steering capabilities, powered by readily available electronics, such as GPS, autopilot systems, compact servomechanisms, and a disposable battery.
“We designed these to be used in areas where existing infrastructure was insufficient to get critical items — blood, medical supplies and so on — to where they needed to be,” said Mikell Taylor, Otherlab’s team lead for the project. “We came up with a glider design because it seemed the most efficient for the application,” she said.
A conventional aircraft would ferry the APSARA glider part of the way before release. Factoring in the wind, the team believes it can hit a targeted radius of 33 feet.