One of the leading newspapers of the country, Business Line, recently published a news about Garuda Aerospace's White Knight drones and how they were used to deliver medicines and vaccinations to four hospitals in Bengaluru. According to the same source, an official from ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) contacted the Managing Director of Garuda Aerospace, Agnishwar Jayaprakash.
ISRO has requested Garuda for using drones to delivery not only medicines, but also vegetables and food to the residential colony of ISRO located in Sullurpeta town in Andhra Pradesh's Nellore district.
Garuda Aerospace is a startup that provides drone service in Chennai. It designs and customizes drones for multiple-purpose applications.
According to a statement by the MD of the startup, "The ISRO official wanted us to conduct trials of drone-based delivery of medicines, vegetables, food and spraying of disinfectants at its staff quarters near the rocket launch town Sriharikota, which we did successfully by deploying three White Knight drones on Wednesday (May 5)."
As per an official of ISRO, there are, at present, 200 Covid-positive cases in the ISRO colony. The particular area where drone trials are conducted features 40-45 quarantined houses.
Trials are successful
As per reports, trials are successful; however, the drones are bulky. They need to be customized further and their size need to be decreased so that they are able to navigate between telephone wires and power cables to reach balconies of the residential quarters.
Garuda Aerospace had conducted drone sanitization operations in Varanasi, which is the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the Minister for Space. PM Modi has always shown interest in India's space research and the organization ISRO.
(Source: Business Line)
