IIT Guwahati soon to have a Drone Flying School, signs MoU with AMTRON and RCH.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT Guwahati) on Thursday, January 19, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with industry partners, Assam Electronics Development Corporation (AMTRON) and RC Hobbytech Solutions (RCH).

The MoU was signed by Parameswar K Iyer, Officiating Director, IIT Guwahati, S Sundar, IFS- Managing Director, AMTRON and Biswajit Dey, Co-Founder, RC Hobbytech Solutions Pvt Ltd.

The tripartite MoU signed aims to work on strengthening and expanding drone-based training, research and development, manufacturing for various sectors such as agriculture, disaster management, wildlife conservation, and health care.

Speaking during the MoU signing event, Professor Parameswar K Iyer, officiating director at IIT Guwahati, said, the three organizations will work in tandem to actively engage in the research and development activities and the esteemed members of IIT Guwahati Drone Centre and Technology Incubation Hub will be integral parts in this endeavour for the greater good of the region.

According to an official press release, under the MoU, the campus will soon to have a drone-flying school which will offer professional drone flying courses and even connect the students with organizations who are in search of professional drone flyers and much more.

“The Commercial Drone Flying School will offer commercial drone flying fresher courses and other related advisory and consultancy services such as renewing their drone flying license, securing necessary commercial drone permits and helping prepare students for drone flying tests,” stated the release.

Some of the professional courses the school will be teaching will offer a wide range of services are drone-based survey and mapping; Geographic Information Systems courses; coding and AI-related courses; coding and AI- related courses, and others.

Since the campus will be set up in IIT Guwahati, the classes for these courses will also take place at the IIT Guwahati campus.

IIT Guwahati along with the two other industry partners, AMTRON and RCH will initially work on developing a few prototype drones with an aim of getting them certified by the Quality Council of India (QCI).

These will be used in Agricultural activities such as spraying/seeding and crop health monitoring and Vertical Take-Off and Landing fixed wing Drone for payload delivery, mapping and surveillance.

Then a Disaster Response Management System will be developed to identify and actuate any disaster response within the state.

And for this, a team of students and professionals along with ready-to-fly surveillance and payload delivery drones will be set up for emergency response, the release said.

While IIT Guwahati will develop drones to cater to the needs of the state to contain disasters, AMTRON will provide communication support, and RCH will provide the necessary technical expertise in developing the drones and associated systems, the release further stated.

Apart from these, a Disaster Response Cell will be established at IIT Guwahati which will be operated by the Drone Helpline Student Volunteer Team of the Institute and AMTRON Drone team, the release said.

Speaking about the objective of the agreement, Biswajit Dey, Co-Founder – EduRade said, “Our mission is to train youths of North Eastern region in emerging technology so that they can upskill themselves and find relevance into the ever-growing technological landscape of current world. We are quite optimistic about this endeavour that our efforts will bear fruit and youths of this region will be able to take the self-employment route at large scale.”

Notably, IIT Guwahati is progressively working on developing a network of industry and academic experts to work on disaster risk reduction. The recent collaboration will lead towards strengthening the Disaster Management Strategy for the state of Assam.