Today, we find drones are used mostly for surveillance of large areas. But more practically, it is being used for mapping purposes, spraying pesticides in large agricultural lands, lifting weights from one point to another, and assisting traffic on road. Recently, brand new drone technology was displayed at Smart India Hackathon.
“All the errors were the best teachers”
However, two drones and an algorithm were developed in which it is possible to coordinate eight to nine drones to fly together. However, the interesting part is that they will be flown inside a Bucky Ball (It is like a soccer ball in which the carbon atoms are connected in the same pattern of hexagons and pentagons, giving a spherical structure) to keep them safe while flying.
Rs 1 lakh was bagged by the team at the grand finale of Smart India Hackathon-hardware edition held the REVA University in Bengaluru, one of the 19 nodal centres for the grand finale of Smart India Hackathon.
The members of the team were Ashwin Kotgire (19), Japjyot Gulati (20), Mohit Arora (19), Pallavi Dadape (19), and Prajakta Lanje (19), students of IT engineering at Pune Institute of Computer Technology and their leader was Siddhant Nikumbh who said “All the errors were the best teachers”.
What’s new?
The unique feature of their development was that usually if the master gets delayed then the whole system is delayed, unlike this one which has a virtual node acting as master. Therefore, it results in “zero percent failure” according to the team.
Under this, the team created an Apache web server where all the information after getting stored temporarily on a Single Board Computer device called Raspberry Pi is transferred. The team will upgrade the Raspberry Pi camera model V2 with a camera of higher quality for better accuracy which can at present capture a picture of two acres at most.
What next?
They are now planning to work independently on more advanced drones by using the prize money in the projects. They will also be taking part in another competition at the Indian Institute of Crafts and Design, organized by AICTE.
Furthermore, they will soon be working with the Government of India with a recommendation from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
