Can you imagine yourself trapped in an emergency where food is not available, and you struggle to survive. Well, don’t worry! A team of scientists from Swiss federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) has developed a technology using drone to provide food for those who are stranded in such situation.

No, this is not food delivery or food transport by drone. Here drone itself is food or we can say partially edible!

EPFL researchers had made two wings of drone edible by modifying the wings using food. Rice cakes are attached to rudimentary fuselage which is a tail unit and a propellent unit. This innovation can save lives of those who go on adventure, who are lost in the process or injured or stranded. While waiting for the rescuers, those are in trouble can feed on to rice cakes and contain their hunger.

Researchers presented their work at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems in Kyoto under the title, “Towards Edible Drones for Rescue Missions: Design and Flight of Nutritional Wings.”

These partially edible drones are made with 50% food carrying mass in the wings. After consuming rest of the non-edible part can be recycled.

RoboFood -Developing edible robots in a way that maximizes both performance and nutritional value.

Our ultimate goal is to create food that’s like a robot – says Shintake.

Jun Shintake Scientist from Japan is part of this Engineering research group. According to Shintake, scientists are trying to develop edible robots elsewhere for a wide variety of reasons and scenarios. The new drone which has rice crackers in the wings could also be used as a quick delivery meal to those who are in distress, and it will help to boost their confidence.

Edible drones are about 70 centimeters across, wings are built with rice crackers stuck together with gelatin. It provides 300 calories of food and 80 grams of water. It means half of the drone is edible. Research team is working on increasing the edible portion to 75% or so more than the food it can deliver when compared to conventional drone.

References:

• https://www.designboom.com/
• https://www.cnet.com/
• https://dronedj.com/
• https://spectrum.ieee.org/
• Image credit: Image by Bernd Thomas from Pixabay (cc by 0)