Bangalore Boys Bag Laurels at SUAS-2014 in U.S.


BANGALORE: For those who have the zeal to emerge victorious, there's no looking back. The team of nine students from Bangalore RV College of Engineering faced a last-minute crash during a test flight at the Student Unmanned Air System (SUAS), 2014 competition in Maryland, U.S. However, the team break through the hurdles and bagged four prize barrels and 50, 000 cash award, reports Times of India.

This recent win comes after a year they emerged victorious at the NASA Systems Engineering Award for designing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, commonly known as drone. Named Project Jatayu, it was mainly worked for deploying drones for land surveillance, aerial advertising or for assisting in aerial shots for films.

Atul Ramachandra, one of the team members said, "We have been building Unmanned Aerial Vehicles since 2009, and this was our third international competition. We generally find time after college and during holidays to work on prototypes but this time we had very little scope to rebuild the plane. The team, however, worked together and that reflected in the competition," reports TOI.

Mrinal Pai, one among the students who worked on the project, exclaimed, “Drones are perceived to be weapons of destruction. Why such technologies should be used only as weapons of war. The answer to this question led us to develop products that bring these drones into a social atmosphere where they perform innovative, safe and beneficial applications,” reports Deccan Herald.

During the competition, the team competed with over 30 different countries at the five-day event, which ended on 22 June 2014. "We were supposed to complete as many missions possible in the time allotted to us, which included autonomous takeoff, navigation, imagery and payload dropping to name a few," added Archit Jain, another team member.

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