BENGALURU : Students of Kumurangum College of Technology in Coimbatore stood head-to-head with a number of startups and defence personnel at the Defence Innovation Program (iDEX) that took place here on Monday.They were one of the few student teams that participated in the event. Called team ProtoSem (Forge), the students are working on designing silent drones that can be used for surveillance.
The preliminary designing has been done, and the team is on the verge of making a prototype now. Harish S, a student, says, “With drones, no one has been able to achieve making drones with zero decibels levels. Most commercial drones emit a sound between 60 to 70 decibels. We want to make drones that emit not more than 20-30 decibels.”
He adds that even a multinational company like Amazon has not been able to make drones that are silent. “They are working on a number of drone delivery technologies, yet they have been able to reduce only around 6 decibels from the existing drones. It is a difficult task, but not impossible,” he adds.
Radhalakshmi R, another student working on the project, says their approach is to design a hybrid drone — with rotter blades and a winged design.
“We’re figuring out how to best integrate our designs. We are using rotter blades in duct-like structure so that the sound does not get out. Most of the designing is done using the same approach. In most cases, when you put a duct, the level of thrust decreases. Finding a balance between the optimum thrust and reduced sound from the rotters is crucial,” says Harsha.The team, which has students from various engineering branches, wants to go towards bio-avionics.