Researchers Create Fully Functional 3D-Printed Drone For the Defense Department

Researchers at the University of Virginia have
created a hand-launched, wing-shaped unmanned aerial
vehicle—otherwise known as a drone—that can be printed in a little
more than a day for a cost of $2,500.

It’s built from easily obtainable, “off-the-shelf” parts, and
its main processor is an Android smartphone, which means that just
about anyone with access to a 3D printer could make one. A complete
printing takes about 31 hours. 

Here’s a video looking at the development and testing of the
first prototypes:

A few technical specs from
the Wired report that alerted me to the project:

The aircraft, with a four-foot wingspan, weighs just 1.8 pounds.
Loaded with all the electronics gear, it comes in at just under 6
pounds. That lets it fly at 40 mph for as long as 45 minutes,
though the team’s working to get that up to an hour. An earlier
prototype could top 100 mph, and the team believes the plane could
hit 120 mph, at the cost of a very quickly drained battery.

It can carry 1.5 pounds, so attaching a camera to it would be no
problem. The batteries take two hours to fully charge and are
easily swapped out, so if you’ve got three or four packs on hand,
the Razor can be in the air nearly continuously. The plane can be
controlled from up to a mile away, or fly on its own using
preloaded GPS waypoints to navigate. The team uses the Nexus
smartphone’s 4G LTE as well, meaning commands could be sent from
much farther away, though FAA guidelines have kept them from
long-distance testing.

Here’s where the 3-D printing really comes in handy: The design
can be modified—and reprinted—easily, to be bigger or smaller,
carry a sensor or a camera, or fly slower or faster. 

The drone was created at the request of MITRE, a Defense
Department contractor, but the low price and easy availability of
its components means this is the sort of thing that hobbyists or
small businesses could easily create and operate on their own,
especially if the design (or, more likely, something close) is
publicly distributed.