The three octocopters took off from the Begumpet Airport for a sortie on the airfield with one of them carrying a long unwieldy object tethered at two ends. And after a few minutes of flying in formation, the three unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) landed at the same spot where they took off from.
“We have developed them at the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL). The brushless motors that power the vehicles are imported while most of the other components are developed by us,” said P.V. Suryanarayana Murthy, who heads the UAV division of CSIR-NAL.
Deliver COVID vaccines
The octocopters are designed to carry a weight of up to 20 kilograms over 10 kilometre distance. “This can be very useful for relief missions during emergencies in hostile terrain. A food drop or medicine drop can be performed if we know the location of the victims,” said Mr. Murthy, who shared information that the UAV was deployed to deliver COVID vaccines in Jammu region as well as Karnataka.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India, had granted conditional permission to CSIR-NAL for conducting Beyond Visible Line of Sight (BVLOS) flight trials in September.
“The key for an UAV is the algorithm and design, and we have developed both. We did prototyping and testing and we are in talks to share the technological know-how for development and marketing four companies,” said Mr. Murthy.
Each octocopter is expected to be priced around ₹10 lakh. The UAVs have a feature where the landing spot can be geo-tagged and it will deliver there. The recipient has to press a button to send the vehicle back to the starting spot. The UAV can also be deployed for survey and agriculture purpose as it can carry a payload of 20 kg.
