Among the drones built by the aeromodelling club at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati are ‘Warehouse drones’ for warehouse management, ‘Reaper drones’ for military and law enforcement, and a ‘Ornithopter’ based on bird design for monitoring in restricted places. According to an official, the club encourages students to use their creativity, technology, and invention in aeromodelling to create smart drones with simple user interfaces.
“The club has developed different types of drones, including ‘Warehouse drones’ for warehouse management, ‘Reaper drones’ for military and law enforcement, ‘Ornithopter’ based on the design of birds that can be used for surveillance in tight spaces, for wildlife photography, and ‘RAVEN’, an indigenously developed VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) capable fixed-winged aircraft,” said Chivukula Vasudeva Sastri, a professor at the Department of Chemistry, IIT Guwahati.
“Aside from these initiatives, students have also created a drone capable of firing at targets with pinpoint accuracy. The firing mechanism is intended to return to its former position while waiting for the pilot’s signal to fire again “He went on to say.
Mr Sastri added that in the real world, warehouses were one of the most challenging places to maintain due to the numerous repetitive duties such as inventory management and transporting things to different locations. Failure to complete these responsibilities on time might result in significant financial losses. To minimise human inefficiencies, the developers created a drone to perform labor-intensive tasks that need time-consuming repeated physical activity.
“With a little tweaking in the programme, for future scope, the utility of the drone can be modified from understanding the flow of water in agricultural lands to delivery of goods within a city by using line following algorithms along roads, and it can also be used for faster identification of items in industrial inventory,” Mr Sastri said.
The ‘Reaper’ is a locally produced unmanned aerial vehicle intended primarily for military and law enforcement applications such as patrolling, target identification, and tracking, among others. “The drone may also be utilised during natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes, assisting disaster management personnel in their search for injured/trapped individuals through the use of hyperspectral imagery. Another use is that it can gather and examine data on animals in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries “Mr. Sastri went on to say.
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