Drones are an extremely hot topic these days, and I am quite sure that the military is not yet quite done with the expansion of drone use in the theater of war. Reverse engineering is one fear that countries have – to let your precious technology be stripped apart piece by piece and analyzed by the enemy, so that they can come up with something better over your creation in due time – without having to go through the initial research and development process. Hence, your drones that are shot down might actually be the catalyst for other drones that come into your backyard in the future. How about creating a drone that can biodegrade by itself after a crash?
This is what this “biological drone” is all about – it sports a fungal body that has a layer of protective bacteria covering it. Why so, you ask? Well, the bacteria will do their bit in the biodegradation process in the event of a crash, so that there is no trace of the drone at all after some time, now how neat is that? This would make such a drone ideal to fly over sensitive environments as well as perform espionage missions, claims Lynn Rothschild of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who happens to be an adviser for the student team that created this drone.
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