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

We began by experimenting with producing cellulose in sheets and cellulose acetate non-biologically. Seeing that primarily cellulose materials are extremely strong and tough, but tear easily and becomes soggy when wet, we sought to increase the durability of the cellulose by grinding it into pieces to create a cellulose paste (that became spreadable into sheets like paper made from wood pulp) and stretching and twisting it into ropes to add strength. A few of our material samples follow:

While experimenting with cellulose-based materials, we also explored traditional starch bioplastics to compare material functionality. Here is an example of a starch bioplastic that we produced synthetically in the lab:

Realizing that cellulose acetate is tough but thin, our team was in need of a building material that was durable 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. Evocative shipped us mycelium samples (pictured below), that we skinned in bacterial cellulose.