Otherlab has solved the problem of dead-heading in a slightly different way, as noted by Seeker:
Otherlab’s team, led by Mikell Taylor, made the drone in response to a DARPA call for disappearing unmanned systems as part of the agency’s Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems (ICARUS) program. It’s designed to land within about a 33-foot (10-meter) radius of a pre-programmed GPS spot.
ICARUS: great spot of humor there. Continujng:
Currently, dropping emergency supplies like blood and vaccines from the air is messy and inefficient with plenty of loss, Taylor explained. Sending regular drones is expensive because they have a bad habit of crashing and turning into trash. Airdropped cargo attached to a parachute can break apart in mid-air, land in a pond or end up in the wrong hands.
“DARPA was interested specifically in something that could degrade fairly quickly so when you deliver your supplies with a hundred of these, you don’t have drones littering the ground for the next 20 years,” Taylor said. To that end, her team constructed the body from flexible cellulose-based material. Inside were off-the-shelf electronics, although DARPA has a separate program for electronics that dissolve on impact.
If we add a self-aware AI to the drone, then we’d have a scenario reminiscent of Blade Runner (I never read the P. K. Dick story Bladerunners originated from), in which an artificially sentient organism has a very short lifespan. And there might be a temptation to add that capability, if ever developed, since that would give the drone more flexibility.
There’s a short story in there somewhere.
But at the moment you have to like the idea a lot, once the dissolving electronics are “perfected.” And it occurs to me – dissolution does not mean traceless dissolution. What if, say, the jungle floor was discolored where a drone crashed and dissolved? Would this amount to art? Perhaps if done purposefully by an artist?
