Two GNDU students develop multi-purpose drone

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Amritsar, April 12

Two students — Swarnim Sharma and Pegoutam Saini from the Department of Electronics Technology at Guru Nanak Dev Universityhave designed and developed a multi-purpose autonomous drone as part of a practical project in the field of electronics and communication engineering. The drone is a quadcopter, which can be scaled up to an octocopter design, and has several advantages over traditional drones available in the market, including scalability, a locally designed controller board, open-source software, and cost-effectiveness. The drone is also equipped with the latest features such as GPS-based return to launch and altitude hold.

The team designed the main controller chip using MPU6050 gyroscope and accelerometer sensors, and the drone has four brushless DC motors, each connected to electronic speed controllers powered by lithium polymer batteries. The drone will be further developed with artificial intelligence and computer vision-based technologies for precision agriculture. The drone will be used for agricultural applications such as radial imaging of fields for automated detection of crop diseases, nutrient deficiency detection in different crops and automated dispersion of pesticides and fertilizers.

Department head Dr Ravinder Kumar said the drone could be the first real-time agri-tech solution for farmers. The department focuses on improving the problem-solving capabilities of students and provides them with opportunities to apply their knowledge to offer solutions to real-time problems. The development of the drone was supported by the Golden Jubilee Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, a newly established incubation hub at Guru Nanak Dev University. “These types of activities by students will help in fulfilling the goals of the Make in India initiative of the government of India,” said Dr Kumar.

Better than others

The drone is a quadcopter, which can be scaled up to an octocopter design, and has several advantages over traditional drones available in the market, including scalability and cost-effectiveness