ICFOSS Plans Summit on Open Drone Techs on Oct 28

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), promoted by the Government of Kerala, is organising a one-day summit on FOSS technologies in drone here on October 28.

M. Sivasankar, IT Secretary, Government of Kerala, will inaugurate the ‘Open Drone Summit’ at B-Hub, Mar Ivanios Vidyanagar, Nalanchira at 10 am. The inaugural function will also see the release of open drone designs by ICFOSS and the launch of Open Drone Community.

Researchers at ICFOSS will publish their works on Open Drones and allied applications along with demonstration of completed projects and models at the summit. Creating a community on drone technologies will open up opportunities for its local applications. The community supports capacity building and generation of innovative solutions using the technology.

There will be a presentation on “Regulatory environment for operation of drone in India” by R.S. Santhosh, Joint General Manager, Air Traffic Management, Airport Authority of India. Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) will give a presentation on ‘Ideathon’, and how students can leverage to do R&D for drone and other technologies.

Besides, individuals and organisations will showcase their works on drone technology at Mar Ivanios Ground. Elaborating on the aims and objectives of the summit, Dr Jayashankar Prasad, Director, ICFOSS, said “ICFOSS has identified that the key issue in increasing adoption of aerial mapping in Kerala is the cost of the equipment and software used for it.”

“While the technology is relatively simple, the quality of the components and the system is critical. So, a team at ICFOSS started researching and designing of low cost drones. They designed a flying wing and fixed wing trainer crafts. These designs are unique and iterated with field tests,” he said. “ICFOSS is working on delivery drones as their next research focus. These drones could deliver medicines and essentials at hard to reach areas and situations,” he added.

Free Software Drone technologies have a lot of potential in public sector from infrastructure maintenance of utilities and urban planning to forest conservation. Drones at Panchayat level could be used for resource mapping, disaster management and mitigation plans, watershed management, creating development plans etc.

Emerging technologies like Drone and Geo Informative System (GIS) are made affordable in Kerala using the Open Drone designs and research activities by ICFOSS. The Drone/GIS development team at ICFOSS has been researching in the field of 3D modelling and GIS analysis using low cost drones for the public. The team has developed two fully functional and working prototypes that are presently used for data acquisition for GIS applications.

The models include a Hexacopter and a flying wing, which are capable of flying fully autonomous flights. These open designs will enable any person to create a flying wing at a cost of under Rs 10,000, which can be used with a bundle of free software like Open Drone Map to develop and analyze 3D models.