IIT-Guwahati Students Develop Drone for Warehouse Management

According to an official, the club encourages students to use their creativity, technology, and innovation in aeromodelling to create smart drones with simple user interfaces. "The club has developed various types of drones, including 'Warehouse drones' for warehouse management, 'Reaper drones' for military and law enforcement, 'Ornithopter' based on the design of birds that can be used for surveillance in tight spaces, for wildlife photography, and 'RAVEN,' an indigenously developed VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) capable fixed-winged aircraft," said Prof. Chivukula Vasudeva Sastri, IIT, Guwahati.

"In addition to these projects, students have created a drone capable of firing at targets with pinpoint accuracy. The firing mechanism is designed to return to its previous position while waiting for the pilot's command to fire again," he added.

In a real-world scenario, warehouses were one of the most difficult places to maintain, with various repetitive tasks such as inventory management or moving objects to different locations, according to Sastri.

Failure to complete these tasks on time can result in significant financial losses. To avoid human inefficiency, the innovators created a drone to perform labor-intensive tasks that require time-consuming repetitive physical work.

"With a little bit of programme tweaking, for future scope, the utility of the drone can be modified from understanding the flow of water in agricultural lands to delivery of goods within a city by using line following algorithms along roads, and it can also be used for faster identification of items in industrial inventory," Sastri said.

"The drone can also be used during natural disasters like floods or earthquakes, helping disaster management teams search for injured/trapped people by making use of hyperspectral imaging. Another application is that it can collect data on animals in any national park/wildlife sanctuary and study their behaviour," Sastri explained. 

The 'Reaper' is a locally developed unmanned aerial vehicle that is primarily intended for military and law enforcement applications such as patrolling, target identification, and tracking, among others.