Advanced Manufacturing of Modular, Recyclable Drones

The appeal of drone-enabled point-to-point delivery services has grown considerably in recent years. There has been significant progress in developing capabilities needed for operating drone-enabled services, such as AI-assisted decision-making and beyond-the-visual-line-of-sight operations. Unfortunately, there hasn't been the same progress in the manufacturing of drones, which is required to meet the needs of this budding industry. When evaluating candidate drone platforms, factors such as payload capacity, endurance, and cost favor large fixed-wing platforms over smaller, multirotor aircraft. However, these fixed-wing assets come with additional challenges, such as the logistics of transporting and storing the large airframes, and more complex manufacturing requirements. These challenges must be addressed to fully leverage low-cost fixed wing drones for long-range, affordable delivery services. 

MITRE has addressed both critical challenges in a research project focused on advancements in drone fabrication called the Advanced Manufacturing of Modular, Recyclable Drones. The approaches developed in this project provide the following benefits:

• More than a 100x improvement in production rate (compared to 3D printing) using our novel design and manufacturing approach—facilitating the production of these drones where they're desired and when they're required.
• More than a 37x increase in packing density (compared to conventionally manufactured fixed-wing drones) through use of a “rapidly recyclable airframe,” where an airframe can be reduced to raw materials and fully reconstructed in the same or different configurations in minutes.
• More than a 100x reduction in airframe cost compared to conventional fixed-wing construction methods.
• Ability to rapidly exchange payloads—driving down costs associated with platform changes and reengineering.

Through the support of MITRE’s independent research and development program, this project proceeded rapidly with a focus on minimizing final mass-production cost. By inverting the typical “build to requirements” design approach and instead stridently adhering to “design-for-manufacturability” and “design-for-assembly” practices from the outset, our approach allowed for rapid domestic manufacturing of large fixed-wing drones with only minor design tweaks from initial designs. In this way, the multidisciplinary team enabled a complete, rapid, and efficient “design - build - fly” development cycle after only six months of dedicated research—a testament to MITRE’s innovation efficiency and pace of delivery.

For more information about MITRE's Advanced Manufacturing of Modular, Recyclable Drones, or to inquire about licensing opportunities, contact our Technology Transfer Office at techtransfer@mitre.org.