Father-son's homegrown planes in defence collaboration

[thestringshredder]

The small, first floor flat in a quiet lane of Adyar is buzzing with activity. Quadcopters with four humming rotors and miniature planes, commonly known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), *** the verandah which resembles a small airport without a runway. What started as a place for student projects in 2010 is now incubating projects developed in collaboration with national labs for defence and police forces.

"We are making UAVs at lower costs to open up the technology for use in a variety of areas," said Sai Pattabiram, who runs Sri Sai Aerotech Innovations Private Ltd. Pointing at one of the prototypes, he said, "This costs 3.5 lakh and has the same capabilities as ones from the US and Israel, which cost 35 lakh to 3.5 crore."

UAV technology has both destructive and constructive uses. While the US military uses them and calls them drones, UAVs can be used in agriculture, surveying, crowd management and even to monitor illegal mining activity as Tamil Nadu did last year.

Pattabiram's 18-year-old son Sai Venkatesh gets into technical specifications even as he deftly controls the quadcopter. Last month, the father-son duo signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL), which does aircraft research and development.

The 3.5 lakh proto type has an extremely short take-off distance and can attain a height of 200m. It is made of the kind of ABS plastic used in car bumpers. "It can be moulded locally and parts can be made by anyone cheaply," said Pattabiram .

The shelves in the room are filled with do-it-yourself kits for making aircraft. "We use parts from these kits and add advanced functionality like auto pilot so that they can be put to more sophistic at eduse," said Venkatesh. "Open source software, miniaturization of camera and low costs of electronics has allowed us to come up with these projects."

They involve students from engineering colleges such as Anna University and Hindustan University. "They are not limited in their imagination like experienced scientist," said Pattabiram.

"We have signed MoUs with 14 robotic start-ups in the country , exploring different technologies ," said G Ramesh, project director at NAL. Aerospace departments in various engineering colleges are also working on developing UAV models.

For example, at Anna University , students are tinkering with the idea of traffic management and spraying pesticides on agricultural fields using UAVs. The prototype is expected to be ready in a month, said K Senthil Kumar , professor at Department of Aerospace Engineering .

Link - http://articles.timesofindia.indiat...uavs-anna-university-unmanned-aerial-vehicles