For drone deliveries, saying goodbye to crosswinds seems like a dream come true… but a tiny, 2-gram parachute is making it happen. Engineers in Montreal built a simple system that drops almost straight down, even when wind nudges it off course. Instead of expensive fabrics and cords, this design starts as a thin plastic disc and turns into a parachute in midair. In tests, it landed with more precision than many expensive options—crucial when “close enough” can still mean “wrong roof.”
Professors David Mélançon and Frédérick Gosselin of Polytechnique Montréal conducted the study, with assistance from École Polytechnique in France. The research, which was published in Nature, suggests more intelligent drops for what is needed. “It will always realign and then fall straight down,” according to Mélançon.
How the parachute works
The team starts with a thin, flat piece of plastic called a Mylar disc—instead of making a fabric canopy with cords and seams. They laser-cut a closed-loop design using kirigami, a Japanese technique in which cuts change the bending and stretching of a sheet. There is a small weight in the middle. When moving air is released, “opening” is initiated. The disc creates a strong canopy without the need for traditional rigging by puffing into the shape of an inverted bell.
Common parachutes drift because of sideways push caused by swinging payloads, uneven deployment, and crosswinds. Here, the kirigami design adds flexibility (the disc can change shape while in flight) and porosity (air can flow through). The engineers refer to this process as “flow-induced reconfiguration,” where the shape changes until forces are balanced.
After everything has calmed down, the system settles at “terminal velocity,” the constant speed at which air resistance equals weight.
Accuracy —and real potential for the future
The team tested three discs—an uncut Mylar circle, one with concentric slits, and a closed-loop kirigami design. Only the closed-loop version stabilized quickly and consistently hit near the target, often within about three feet from 54 feet, indoors and out, even with gusts. In controlled indoor drops at 0°, 45°, and 90° release angles, landing spread stayed tight, simplifying aiming in small drop zones.
It was validated by outdoor tests: even with imperfect releases, a drone dropped from about 200 feet showed a steady descent with little drift and no pitching. As Mélançon said, “It will always realign and then fall straight down.”
The design is a single, laser- or die-cut sheet on one suspension line—fast to deploy and low-drift, reducing lost packages and risky retrievals. It scales by tuning cut spacing/count for different payloads. Next steps include slower descents via a soft, stretchy film, tunable “ballistic” paths, and asymmetric cuts for gentle spirals or short glides. For now, it’s for small loads and short drops—not people or high-altitude entries.
Accurate drone drops using a Kirigami disc parachute
A practical breakthrough for drones, logistics, and emergency response, that’s the flat disc that becomes a reliable parachute using patterned cuts and airflow. It isn’t a shopping item yet, but the use cases are clear.
Straighter drops can reduce losses, re-delivery costs, and liability. For agencies and nonprofits, better accuracy means fewer “it landed somewhere over there” moments. Educators get a safe way to teach drag, stability, and “terminal velocity.”
What are the next steps? Follow publications and demos from the Polytechnique Montréal team and the Nature paper; identify where landing accuracy is your bottleneck (tight urban zones, windy terrain, hard-to-reach sites); and ask vendors how they measure drift and landing spread. If results scale, expect fewer lost packages and more on-target deliveries—even in crosswinds.