Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
With an aim to carry out logistic operations in the Himalayan frontier, an Untethered Multi-copter payload, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), was developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The UAV is capable of flying in the Himalayan environment with 5 kg of payload and even dropping bombs in the enemy areas.
The multi-copter was displayed by DRDO at the 108th Indian Science Congress. Mahesh Shahu, an official of DRDO, informed ‘The Hitavada’ that successful trials of the multi-copter were conducted at Sikkim at 14,000 altitude. The product would be ready for induction in the forces after two remaining successful trials, he said. The DRDO has developed the multi-copter with payload capacity from 5 kg to 25 kg and working on to increase the capacity upto 30 kg, he stated.
The multi-copter has an onboard Li-ion battery bank. Advantage of the multi-copter is that it has high payload capacity and endurance of 30 minutes. It can carry out autonomous missions with waypoint navigation up to 5 km radius. It has the feature of payload release. So it can travel to a designated location in auto mode and release payload and return to home location. It can also be used to drop a bomb at an enemy site without risk of human loss, the official said.
Similarly, the payload UAV would be helpful to immediately drop medicines for the soldiers deployed at high altitude or war zone. Speeding of multi-copter is 6 to 6 m/s and it can fly at upto 200 meters height in the wind speed of 30 kmph. Other features of multi-copter include - beacon based landing accuracy of 100 mm, ground vehicle follow mode and modular design for ease of operation.
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