Students bag flying machine contract

Most youngsters their age spend their free time partying. But over the last year, 10 engineering undergraduates from Delhi burnt the midnight oil reading up on algorithms, image processing and artificial intelligence from e-books procured from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s website. Their aim: to build an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

Their efforts bore fruit when they bagged top honours at an international UAV competition conducted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) — the world’s largest non-profit organisation for advancing the unmanned systems community.

Now, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has offered to fund the team from the Delhi Technology University (DTU) for building a UAV with civilian and military applications.

“Here is a group of students who are undergraduates and have worked on a technology they don’t even have classes on,” said Ray O Johnson, Lockheed Martin’s senior vice president and chief technology officer.

“My batchmates and I started our project to develop a fixed-wing UAV,” said Rochak Chadha, one of the students. “Starting from the plane’s structure, we built the entire engine and the components.”

Lockheed will provide the group with design space and require them to develop a flying prototype. “Lockheed has given us specific tasks for the first two years. In the first year, we have to design the aircraft, and by the end of the second year we should have a flying prototype,” said Sahil Kapur, another team member. “It’s easier said than done.”

The team has to make an autonomous system, which is not possible without artificial intelligence. —With inputs from agencies