DARPA: PLANES = PLANTS?

The Pentagon wants planes to start act­ing more like plants. That’s the ulti­mate goal of a research project, funded by Darpa, the Defense Department’s mad sci­ence divi­sion.
We all know plants change their shape. Some bend to catch the sun’s rays; some snap to catch a meaty treat; some stiffen when they’re watered. Darpa would like to have tough, man-​​made mate­ri­als that can pull off some of the same tricks. Maybe, one day, it can lead to a jet that can pull back its wings when it’s ready to attack, or extend ‘em to glide.
Researchers at Virginia Tech have won from Darpa a $2.1 mil­lion, year-​​and-​​half grant to start to fig­ure out ways to do this. “The plan calls for the inves­ti­ga­tion of the pro­tein struc­tures of plants for the pur­pose of under­stand­ing their role in gen­er­at­ing shape changes in nat­ural mate­ri­als,” says a Virginia Tech press release. “The pro­tein struc­tures under analy­sis would then be used to develop a syn­thetic mate­r­ial that incor­po­rates prop­er­ties that pro­duce con­trol­lable shapes.“
The project Nastic Materials — is part of a whole range of efforts by Darpa to make mate­ri­als that act a lit­tle like liv­ing things. As John Main, the program’s man­ager, said at a DarpaTech con­fer­ence ear­lier this year:

The inter­sec­tion of mate­ri­als sci­ence and nature appears to show great promise for deliv­er­ing mate­ri­als with unob­tain­able prop­er­ties.
Natural mate­ri­als are truly mag­nif­i­cent: Living bones grow, repair dam­age, remodel to dis­trib­ute stress, and pro­duce blood. Muscle turns lipids into work to help us reg­u­late body tem­per­a­ture, main­tain bal­ance, and walk. Plant tis­sues grow, dis­trib­ute nutri­ents, iso­late injury, self-​​clean, sup­port leaves, and some­times even move with sur­pris­ing force, such as tree roots upend­ing con­crete side­walks.
All of these char­ac­ter­is­tics are unob­tain­able [in man-​​made things] if you limit your­self to the world of con­ven­tional mate­ri­als. Yet they are all clearly pos­si­ble, because nature has sup­plied us with exam­ples to study and poten­tial paths to fol­low to cre­ate sim­i­lar capabilities. 

October 18th, 2004 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.