An advanced drone developed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and its constituent National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) today successfully delivered 50 vials of Covid-19 vaccines on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
The octacopter delivered the vaccines along with syringes in a special container from the Chandapura public health care centre to Haragadde in 10 minutes after covering an aerial distance of about 7 kms.
Flying at an altitude of 300m AGL at a speed of 10m/sec, the octacopter returned to Chandapura in approximately the same time duration. It usually takes between 30 to 40 minutes to deliver vaccines to Haragadde from Chandapura by road.
The CSIR-NAL had recently teamed up with the Karnataka government for aerial delivery of Covid-19 vaccines in remote areas using a multicopter drone.
The indigenous, medium class BVLOS multicopter UAV made of lightweight carbon fibre foldable structure has been developed by NAL and can carry a payload of 15 kg with hovering endurance of 40 minutes.
It sports unique features like autonomous guidance through dual redundant MEMS based digital autopilot with advanced flight instrumentation systems. The Civil Aviation ministry had granted conditional permission to CSIR-NAL for conducting Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flight trials on September 13.
NAL's octacopter can fly at an operational altitude of 500m AGL and at maximum flying speed of 36 kmph. Its regulatory compliance includes DGCA-NPNT, geo-fencing and digital sky with 360-degree collision avoidance making it one of the best UAV in its class.
Octacopter developed by NAL can be used for a variety of BVLOS applications for last-mile delivery like medicines, vaccines, food, postal packets, etc. It is integrated with a powerful embedded computer and latest generation sensors for versatile applications like agricultural pesticide spraying, crop monitoring, mining survey, magnetic geo survey mapping, etc.
