A South Korean firm called WOW Future Tech made waves at the recent Boom-Up Festival 2025 – a sizable networking event for Korean startups and investors. The headlining new product was the AirSense UAV drone, constructed from eco-friendly packaging boards and paper fiber. The material choice makes these drones easy to fabricate using resources widely available around the globe, reports Digitimes, and this can cut drone material pricing tenfold (vs carbon fiber). Moreover, sustainability, environmental, and repairability benefits can be enjoyed by those deploying AirSense UAVs.
WOW Future Tech CEO, Munju Kim, was inspired to develop the AirSense UAV drone by seeing reports about the Ukraine war. To be clear, Kim wasn’t moved to design a better drone for waging war, but wanted to address the drone shortage precipitated by this terrible conflict, using readily available materials.
Easy to source cardboard behind big price advantage
Cardboard and similar paper-based packaging are often tossed away once they have served their purpose (typically used for product shipping). It is, therefore, something most economies will have lots of, and will have plants devoted to recycling and repurposing rather than landfill or incineration. Also, neighboring countries may have surpluses of this material to tap into, making it cheap and readily available.
Eschewing expensive carbon fiber composite, an AirSense UAV can be manufactured for ~$1,400, according to WOW Future Tech. This contrasts with the price of a typical military grade carbon fiber drone, with such models costing up to 10x that figure, reports Digitimes.
Kim also indicates that cardboard drones are easily repairable. Unlike carbon fiber drones, repair is simple and cheap using tape or layered paper products, it is claimed. In summary, cardboard is “cheap, sustainable, and quick to deploy.”
Offensive military use downplayed
The WOW Future Tech CEO highlighted the non-military use cases of the cardboard drone, with one example being a deployment alongside its AirSense V2 system with proprietary air-quality sensors fitted to the UAV. In tandem, this drone will use a locally made sensor that is said to be cheaper (half price) than foreign-bought components and has technological advantages over imported modules.
The cardboard drone has attracted the interest of the Korean Defense Ministry and Ground Operations Command, though. Tests are already said to be underway, using the AirSense UAV for reconnaissance and training.
Overseas commercialization of the AirSense UAV should begin as early as next year, according to the firm’s CEO. First, though, it is hoped that it will strengthen Korea’s domestic unmanned systems capabilities with its local-tech-centric approach.
We looked through the WOW Future Tech website and couldn’t find a mention of the new cardboard AirSense UAV. However, it looks like it may be a development based on prior work, namely the ‘Paper Wing PW02’ you can see in our pictures.
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