You’ve probably seen something like this before, a drone that can fly over a fertile area and drop seeds from the sky. But this project being led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, takes the sky seeding method even further. This is what its developers call a self-burying payload carrier a way to more easily, quickly and more cheaply plant in the future.
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00:00You've probably seen something like this before, a drone that can fly over a fertile
00:07area and drop seeds from the sky.
00:09But this project, being led by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, takes the sky
00:13seeding method even further.
00:16This is what its developers call a self-burying payload carrier, a way to more easily, quickly
00:21and more cheaply plant in the future.
00:23They designed the seed carrier after the erodium plant, which has seeds that unfurl and corkscrew
00:27into the ground when they get wet.
00:29This is Professor Lining Yao to explain the R&D process behind the new plantable.
00:33On the material side, we eventually chose wood because it is an abandoned biodegradable
00:39material.
00:40It's also very stiff.
00:41In order to have a self-burying carrier to drill into the ground, it has to be very stiff.
00:48More importantly, wood is a hygromorphic material, meaning it can respond to the rain and self-morph.
00:54Yao adds that they went with a three-tailed design, as it creates perfect angles for the
00:57drilling to occur after the material begins to corkscrew.
01:00But the payload carrier can do more than just help seeds get into the ground.
01:04It can also carry organic fertilizers, pesticidal nematodes, or even sensors.
01:09The aerial planting method using their payload carriers resulted in 61% of all seeds dropped
01:14entering germination after just 15 days.