Team:StanfordBrownSpelman/Building The Drone

Prototyping a Biological UAV

Our team modeled, prototyped, and collaborated with Ecovative Design to grow a mycelium-based chassis for our biological drone. Below you'll find process photos, part designs, and links to open source model files for downloading and additively manufacturing your own biological or bio-inspired unmanned aerial vehicle. Finally, you can see images of the biological, biodegradable UAV that we built and flew!

Starting Small, Ending Big

Realizing that cellulose acetate is tough but thin, our team was in need of a building material that was tough and lightweight. So, we reached out to Evocative Design, a pioneering fungal-mycelium-based biomaterial company, to prototype a mycelium form that could serve as the chassis of our vehicle. Thanks to Evocative, we were able to construct a prototype biological unmanned aerial vehicle!

But we didn't stop there. Our team was enthusiastic about drone design and so we developed concept UAV designs meant to inspire future scientists and designers to think outside the box about how a future, partially living vehicle might look. Pseudo-natural and pseudo-industrial, our drone design references the traditional biological architecture of birds while embracing industrial additive manufacturability.

All 3D printable files for this concept drone are available in the downloads section. Images of our work follow:

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