When we hear, word ‘drone’ the first things come in our mind is about the Indian blockbuster movie “3 idiots” from the year 2009. Besides being the trending words by UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), UAS (Unmanned Aerial System), RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aerial Vehicles), Drones are the new buzz word. Thanks to the advancements in sensors, manufacturing, chips and actuators, they are getting more accessible for use cases apart from Defense Sectors. Companies like DJI, Yuneec, 3DR, etc., and open source hardware and software platforms like Ardupilot, Pixhawk, Mission Planner, etc. have shown the world how affordable can this piece of technology be made. Apart from the fun purpose drones became very useful for education, scientific research, professional and commercial industry use building up India’s Drone Industry.
Defense Drone Industry:
Speaking of the Drone Industry as a whole in India the majority usage can still be given to the defense sectors and security agencies, mainly because of the utility and their spending power which have been looking upto this technology to give them an ‘eye in the sky’. In this effort one of the major Defense Laboratory in India, DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organization) has invested heavily in the Research and Development of Drones with particular focus to the needs of Indian Defense scenarios. Some of the projects/drones from DRDO Labs are DRDO Lakshya , DRDO Netra , DRDO Nishant , DRDO Rustom and DRDO Rustom II which are the frontiers in the aviation and surveillance technologies for defense.
Commercial Drone Industry:
There are wide variety of use cases for drones by civilians and commercial organizations These include, but are not limited to:
assisting aid agencies during humanitarian crises and disaster management,
helping farmers with their fields with simple bird eye view of their field,
providing a new perspective to journalists,
letting conservationists rapidly monitoring wildlife activity, animal tagging and conduct anti-poaching patrols,
as recreational activity, flying a drone can be a lot of fun and learning as a hobby. Infact a lot of people getting into Drone Industry in India have had backgrounds in Aeromodelling.
Currently there is a huge spike in using drones Indian agriculture tier system for mapping the health of crops. This high resolution and accurate information using high end computation and deep learning technologies a set of time series. Financial Institutions and Insurance companies can now use this data to develop better Crop Insurance products.
Besides drones are finding its way into sectors like:
GIS Mapping,
Topographical Surveys,
Industrial Inspections,
Continuous Monitoring and Reporting use cases,
Oil and Gas Companies,
Pipeline Inspections,
Powerline Inspections,
Railway Lines Inspections,
Solar Power Panel Inspections,
Communications and Utility Tower Inspections,
Critical Infrastructure and Historic Monument Inspections
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