TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: The remote controlled aerial vehicle that became a sensation through Amir Khan’s Bollywood flick ‘3 idiots’ can be used to track illegal mining in Goa once the activity resumes.
The brains behind the invention of ‘Netra’ – unmanned aerial device can send a real time aerial video of what it sees without being heard or seen gets up in a jiffy from a confined space and returns on its own.
Amardeep Singh, co-founder of the project said Goa could pitch the device for tracking illegalities in the mining sector, beach safety and other security purposes.
“It can visualize a lot of applications…it can be used for event management, crowd management, beach security and safety, accessing the illegalities in mining and other operations,” he told Herald.
Its functioning was demonstrated to Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar during IIT Bombay Alumni Convention at International Centre of Goa Sunday.
The project is a collaborative development between DRDO’s Research and Development Establishment (Engineers) and Idea Forge, incubate by IIT Bombay. Having government security agencies as their clients, the device could also be used for anti-terrorist and counter-insurgency operations.
“We have supplied to CRPF, BSF, NDRF, Ahmedabad police and Maharasthra police,” he said declining to name other government agencies for they are into an agreement.
At the time when Uttrakhand faced the worst tragedy in the recent memory wherein several hundreds lost their lives in the flash flood, it was Netra that located some of the survivors who were later rescued by the Army.
“Our team worked with the army and disaster management during the rescue operation at Uttrakhand. The aerial device located survivors who were later rescued… Netra is also used for crowd controlling and its management,” the IITian claimed.
The man-portable day and night vehicle weighs two kg with cruise speed of up to 30 km per hour. Its technical specifications also include flight endurance of around 30 minutes, wind and water resistant, autonomous take off and landing facility, autonomous GPS waypoint, navigation and GPS position hold among others. The communication range of the aerial vehicle is 1.5 km line of sight with daylight and thermal cameras.
“If the battery drains, the device safely lands at pre-specified landing point,” Singh added.
The experts had lent the basic model of the aerial vehicle to the makers of ‘3 idiots’ in which the IIT students had to present a project and shown in the song ‘All is well…’ “They needed a basic model to show it is a student’s project. The actual device for real purpose use is much advanced,” he commented.
