Before the coronavirus outbreak, drone startups in India had one main concern – regulatory grey areas. Often seen as a security threat, drones were initially used only in the armed forces. But gradually, they percolated into the domain of civilian activity, and were used for industrial applications, imagery, and surveillance. But drone startups have now managed to capture the limelight in combating coronavirus by playing a key role in disinfecting places across the country. Chennai-based Garuda Aerospace is one among them. Founded in 2016 by Agnishwar Jayaprakash, the startup, which has built several agricultural drones, is now helping the government in drone-based sanitisation projects.
At present, Garuda Aerospace has a manufacturing facility incubated at Agni College of Technology, Chennai. According to the founder, the college ground has become an ideal testing location for all its prototypes.
For the past few weeks, the startup has been using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to disinfect around 3.28 million sq km area across India to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Named as the Corona Killer (CK), these automated UAVs aid in the sanitisation of crowded locations such as markets, metro stations, airports, schools, colleges, hospitals, and government offices, which otherwise would have been an impossible task for public workers to undertake through a manual spraying process.
Using drones is more advantageous due to the accessibility, which enables them to reach heights of up to 450 feet and spray disinfectants on buildings, which is impossible to do manually. The CK 100 sanitisation drone consists of patented autopilot technology, advanced flight controller system, and is equipped with fuel efficient motors that enables the drone to be deployed for 12 hours a day. It has a payload capacity of 15-20 litres, flight duration of 40-45 minutes, and maximum ceiling height of 450 feet, which is sufficient to disinfect 99 percent of tall buildings across India. Each drone can cover 20 km a day.
“Our existing fleet of 300 CK-100 drones can conduct sanitisation operations covering 6,000 km every single day. Garuda Aerospace has been the market leader in the drone industry, and has also designed a DaaS tech platform, which can aggregate over 16,000 drones from our associate companies, ready to be deployed across India,” says Agnishwar.
