Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones is one of the most promising technologies that the country is experiencing. The evolving technology has made its application felt across multiple sectors and post the pandemic, it is clear that drones are the future. In India, drones have been the centre stage for mapping solution and artificial intelligence an make this technology scalable, reliable and faster.

Given these background, Vipul Singh, CEO of Aarav Unmanned Systems gave an insightful presentation on how drones and AI can be used together to achieve greater success. He started his presentation with use cases where he explained how the country is utilizing the services of drones at present such as providing health supplies, food supplies and making ways for creating sustainable cities. He then spoke about the concept of drone autonomy and how AI can make drones more robust and intelligent. However, to do so, he pointed out that drones should be enabled enough to take decisions in different scenario. He also gave a brief background on the evolution of drone technology where at level zero there was a lot of dependency on pilot skills to operate them. Slowly it passed through the stages 1 and 2 and is currently at level 3 and 4 where a combination of multiple sensors and algorithms are being used for easier control and navigation of the drone. But still the understanding of the region in which the drone is operating is left on the pilot. This is where level 5 comes into play and in the next 3 years it is expected that drones will become capable enough to minimize pilot assistance except for taking it to the desired locations. That is when drones will become intelligent enough to sense the situation and take decisions on how they should be operating in that environment to achieve success. This is where artificial intelligence will have a tremendous role to play to help drones take that decision. He gave an interesting example of how a drone can inspect the drone of a wind turbine automatically without any external help and also collect information about it.

The impact side of the AI-led autonomy of drones were also highlighted. The largest application of drones currently is for mapping all the villages in the country for revising the land records known as Svamitva Scheme. Other applications include spraying of pesticides and assessing crops in agriculture in multiple terrain, gathering information and interpreting those data, assessing the efficiency of the mining business by helping them become more evolved and safety compliant, logistics support such as carrying emergency supplies in difficult terrain and other industries such as power transmission corridors, urban and town planning and disaster management.

While summing up, the young CEO also emphasized the fact that the leadership of India is seeing drone as an important element in shaping the mapping solution of India and delivering medicines. Even UNDP recognized that it will help the developing nations improve their public and private services and increase the overall sustainability of the urban areas. Hence, AI is undoubtedly needed to complement the drone technology by making them smarter for the future.