Future Ready
Drone technology is becoming increasingly widespread, and could play a big role in India’s next technological revolution. While drones can be a military threat—they have been used for cross-border terrorism—they can also be used to save lives, by transporting vaccines to far-flung areas of the country. At the Conclave, two entrepreneurs talked about the many possible uses for such platforms and the transformational technologies being developed.
SWARM SATURATION “A swarm of drones is like a flock of birds flying together. First, they never collide with each other, and second, they don’t bang into obstacles. Swarm drones are inspired by biological [phenomena], like how bees or birds operate together. The algorithms that control them generally mimic [these phenomena]. They can be customised specifically for the military domain”
“Drone [manufacturers] are taking stock of the counter measures being put up against them and are improving their systems. For example, the non-kinetic ways [of defending against drones] are to jam their communications or jam their GPS or spoof their GPS. But by next year, there will be drones on the market that can beat these systems... We will have to keep spending money [to develop new technology]”
ANKIT MEHTA Co-founder and CEO, ideaForge
SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS
“The Indian army, which has been looking at drone technology for a really long while now, decided it wants to induct systems [that deploy enhanced] numbers— distributed surveillance—to keep an eye on strategically important areas. Therefore, they decided to purchase systems that can help us keep an eye on such areas at that altitude and in those environmental conditions”
“The systems we are delivering to the army are helping it keep an eye on strategically important areas, giving them unprecedented views of what they had never seen before”
“This is the first time India is going to map all the abadi areas—where villagers actually stay— using drones, under the ‘Svamitva’ scheme. It will be able to provide digitised land records, which are irrefutable, to farmers to get them into the economic mainstream of our country”