Scott Nicholas
Xerox‘s PARC subsidiary has received funds from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to support a program designed to develop a prototype autonomous air vehicle that delivers small payloads and “vanishes” upon completing the mission.
PARC said Monday it will work with AeroVironment to create specialized materials for an autonomous air delivery system under a project within DARPA’s Inbound, Controlled, Airâ€Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems or ICARUS program.
The On-Target Delivery and Disintegration Upon Stress-release Trigger or ONLY-DUST project builds on a previously developed transient device technology that utilized PARC’s material modeling and fabrication process development support.
ICARUS would expand the application of that technology from electronics to complex structures, PARC said.
“It is fun to imagine devices and systems that can perform real-world functions for as long as you want them to and then literally disappear,” said Ross Bringans, director of the electronic materials and devices lab at PARC.
“We’re envisioning initial products for personal data security and environmentally friendly distributed sensors, with more to come.”
PARC nabbed a combined $3.9 million contract from DARPA in June for the development of the “vanishing” air delivery platform.
