As a big morale booster in the fight against the Covid pandemic, students of the Government ITI in Cuttack have developed a drone series named Delta-400 which they claim can go a long way in effortlessly executing a number of operations but most notably delivering vaccines in far-off inaccessible regions.
Built fully indigenously with a joint collaboration by students of the ITI and the IG Drones of Excellence under the sponsorship of the Skill India programme and Skill Odisha mission, the drone has a significantly superior air capability as it can stay afloat for more than 3 hours and with a top speed of 65 kmph.
The special drone which can carry a maximum payload of 4.2 kg can be very well used in lot of areas like border security surveillance, mining, forest and wildlife surveys. Initially conceptualised to aid the mining operations by the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, it has now evolved as a very important tool in the fight against the pandemic, said a designer of the drone.
Delta 400 series drones can help police in ensuring strict Covid appropriate behaviour. It can also be used to deliver vaccines to hilly and remote areas with negligible accessibility as it can travel to a stretch of around 50 kms and till 210 feet beyond visual line of sight which makes it a very important asset for the ICMR and the government of India.
As per sources, the DGCA has already given approval for the use of drone in vaccine delivery.
"It took us around 15 days to build the drone. We have developed only a single pair of the series right now but once we upgrade the facility, we hope to build around 30 pairs of such drones. It will help us reduce its cost and make it easily affordable for use," said the designer.
The Principal of the ITI, Dr Harekrushna Mohanty explained the most important attribute of the drone. "Firstly we need to programme the drone about the topography and terrain of the area of its landing after studying the video and pictures and then it can work autonomously without any external piloting," Mohanty was quoted as saying to news agency ANI.