The Greater Chennai Corporation on Saturday started using drones, on an experimental basis, to spray larvicide along the waterbodies to control the mosquito menace.
The civic body was collaborating with Dr. Kalam Advanced UAV Research Centre on the MIT campus of Anna University for this activity.
Corporation Commissioner Gagandeep Singh Bedi and other senior officials monitored the spraying through drones along the Cooum near Langs Garden Road on Saturday.
Highlighting that it was done on a pilot basis on Saturday, Mr. Bedi said, “We will be carrying out spraying through dones for the next 15 days on an experimental basis and based on the results we will expand further.”
With the help of drones, he said that spraying of the anti-larval oil can be done in a faster and safer manner.
K. Senthil Kumar, Director, Dr. Kalam Advanced UAV Research Centre, said such drones were first used by Agriculture Department for spraying pesticides, when Mr. Bedi was the secretary. They were occasionally used by a few districts, including Chennai, during COVID-19 pandemic for spraying disinfectants, he added.
Running on petrol, drones can fly for 35 minutes on the trot. They had battery backup in case of any failure to quickly bring them back to the ground and prevent them from falling into the waterbodies, he said.
“They can be made to function in a fully automatic manner by feeding the geographic coordinates of the area along which the spraying must be done,” Prof. Senthil Kumar said.
He pointed out that these drones carried a maximum of 16 litres of larvicide.
