Dreams are always illustrated with wings that they help them fly at any height. Making their friends a little jealous, six students from R V College of Engineering, Bangalore, have taken up the task of designing and fabricating a fixed wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with which they will participate in the SAE Aero Design competition that will be held in April 2008 in Georgea, U S. The project has been named ‘Vyoma’.

  Harshavardhana, Dhiraj Vishwanath, Naveen B L and Anand Holani from mechanical engineering and Brinda Mehta and Debolina Sen from electrical and electronics engineering are all set to make history by being the first Indian team to participate in this competition. All of them are third or fourth year students.

Global participation

Students from various universities and colleges around the globe will participate in the Aero Design competition with a UAV which is conceived, designed, fabricated and tested exclusively by them. The UAV which can lift more weight than others will be declared winner of the event. The entry to the competition is restricted to the student members of the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE), the organization which holds the event annually. The whole event is sponsored jointly by Lokheed Martin and NASA.

 The students also aimed at the corporate recruiters present at the show to demonstrate their UAV to them, which may give them a pass to the biggest companies.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

UAV is an aircraft with no on-board pilot. A remote controller can be used to fly it on the basis of a pre-programmed flight plan or a dynamic automation system.

It is currently used for military purposes, including aerial refuelling, reconnaissance and attack. They can also be used for civil purposes like fire-fighting and police observation of riot hit areas. Other areas of UAV uses are landscape mapping and agricultural opererations.

 Facing challenges

These six students are well aware that they have undertaken a big task. The project Vyoma is a year long project which costs Rs 9 lakh.

“Generating the fund is not a small thing. We ourselves have contributed an amount of 50,000 rupees and our college has earmarked an amount of 150,000 from its fund. Now we are looking for Corporates for the remaining 7 lakh rupees”, says Harsha, one of the students in the team.

Moreover, the restrictions on the available power, the aircraft’s length, width and height requirements put the participants in an immense pressure that they have to perform within this limit. Even though the design process of the vehicle has been finished it may need some changes according to the result of engine testing that is in progress.

 These students got help and support from many people including Dr S C Sharma, the principle of R V College. Faculty adviser for the project is Prof R S Kulkarni from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.