March 04, 2013: IIT Kanpur has long been a institution of excellence when it comes to aerospace engineering. The institute's facilities and faculty are involved in several programmes of national importance—from aircraft to missile guidance and to several other areas for the military. Its incubation companies continue to do stellar research and on-field work for the armed forces and government, usually without much fanfare, since these are highly sensitive areas of study, and confidentiality rules apply.

The latest in a series of promising efforts at IIT Kanpur is a laboratory that will design and develop an autonomous mini-helicopter, funded by the Department of Science & Technology. Says Professor C. Venkatesan, who heads the project, "The major focus of this research activity is to design and integrate the sensors (inertial measurement unit consisting of accelerometers and gyroscopes, magnetic sensor, SONAR and GPS) and communication systems (W-LAN and on-board computer) in a model helicopter, and provide the autonomous control and navigation capability. During the progress of this research and development effort, several testing systems have been designed and developed while facing several challenges at every stage of development." The research being conducted at IIT Kanpur on the mini-rotorcraft could very well feed into ongoing efforts within the DRDO and private sector to meet a large requirement in the Indian armed forces, paramilitary and police services for unmanned rotorcraft of every kind.

"Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have played a very important role in the recent years and have transformed the way wars are waged and intelligence is gathered. Given a mission to accomplish, these vehicles would be able to plan a path, avoid obstacles, and reach their destination. The role of human beings in the vehicle would be taken over by sensors, control algorithms and computation units to perform desired tasks," says Professor Venkatesan, adding, "It was decided that a mini-helicopter model would be procured and a ground station, on-board electronics, wireless communication and control algorithm for autonomous flight would be developed around it."

The development and refinement process is currently still on. Greater synergies with NAL, DRDO and private industry may fructify to take the project to the next level. The project has also caught the attention of certain foreign vendors who are looking to get a foothold in Indian development programmes by infusing technologies.

"The challenges faced so far in trying to attain autonomous hover have taught valuable lessons which help in further improvement of control algorithm for untethered hover, auto take-off/landing and forward flight tests. Fully autonomous hover of mini-helicopter is achievable with the right combination of sensors, computation units and wireless systems. Comparing the hover flight by pilot and autonomous hover flight, it is noted that that the autonomous hover of mini-helicopter is very stable. However, many more challenges lie ahead and need to be overcome for attaining the lofty goal of fully-autonomous flight under various conditions," he notes.