Imagine the scenario: You’ve become lost or injured while out hiking, and search and rescue is on their way but you’re starving. If they’re close by, maybe they can send you a drone with some food, but if they’re farther away, you’re out of luck. Unless they can send you an edible drone.
A team of scientists at the EPFL research institute in Switzerland is aiming to make this a reality. Right now, drones that deliver food can’t cover very long distances because their payloads are too heavy. But a long-range fixed-wing drone that’s not carrying anything can.
The team was able to design a fixed-wing drone with wings made out of puffed rice cakes, which were found to be the right consistency to stand in for the expanded polypropylene (EPP) foam the wings are usually made of. The cakes were cut into hexagons and then glued together with an edible gelatin to form a wing shape. They were then covered in a removable plastic layer to protect them. The finished drone can travel at a speed of 33 feet per second and it is estimated that it could carry 80 grams of water if needed.
