MNNIT students make smart drone out of waste
ALLAHABAD: A group of budding mechanical engineers at MNNIT have designed a long-range drone using waste material like discarded high-density thermocol used for packing electronic and electric gadgets.
The ‘smart drone’ promises to reduce cost of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and extend its use to diverse fields.
The drone has been developed by BTech student Aswani Singh and his team including Harsh, Anil, Akanksha, Dhwani and Sweety as part of their project work. The students are now set to launch the drone as a product in the market under the Prime Minister’s ‘Start-Up India’ campaign with support from the Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology. The UAV can be used for military, policing and educational purposes.
They realised the drawback of most UAVs available in the market that they actually looking like, well, drones. This makes them easy to spot and target. The MNNIT students have addressed this problem by making the UAV look like a bird — taking inspiration from Lord Vishnu’s mount Garuda.
“We have made the UAV from thermocol. Although it was a final year project but we have been working on this for the last three years. We made various custom flying models from waste material to finally come up with this bird-like drone,” said Aswani Singh who hails from Muzzaffarpur in Bihar. His father works at a petrol pump in his home town.
The project has been funded by MNNIT while its electronics has been sponsored by Vortex UAS.
“Our UAV, made under the supervision of associate professor Rajeev Srivastava, is special in many ways. It looks like a flying bird so it is hard to identify which renders it almost invisible to the enemy. Its sound cannot be heard from 70 metres and it can easily be used for aerial monitoring without drawing attention of the people. It also has GPS and more than 16 different sensors. It also has live high definition onboard video recording,” explained Aswani.
He said that the drone’s design had withstood several analysis in different labs of MNNIT.
As for structural speciality, the drone made from waste material is low on drag and weight and not bulky like other UAVs.
“It has been tested in strong wind and night. It is suited for use by police and rapid action forces besides national disaster response force, civil defence, home guards and fire fighters. It can also be used to create the map of an area that can help in construction, survey and aerial monitoring,” he added.
The basic model of the UAV costs merely Rs 50,000-60,000 as compared to other firms which charge Rs 8,00,000-20,00,000 for a long range UAV. “The cost of the UAV, however, may increase if custom specification electronics is required,” he added.
This drone can be set up for flight within a minute and can cover a distance of 10 kms at a height of 500 metres.
It runs on an electric motor and is fully rechargeable. “The UAV can even come back to the launching position by itself using GPS if it loses signal,” Aswani said.