KOCHI: The time has come for the ISRO and the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) to collaborate to ensure the net outcome will have manifold use in meeting the country's interests, ISRO chairman V Sivan said here on Thursday.
''While we talk about RADAR, you talk about SONAR. The operating principles are the same. There exist a big avenue for mutual cooperation," he said. Inaugurating ICONS 2018 - the international conference on sonar systems and sensors organised by the Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) as part of the DRDO's diamond jubilee celebrations - Sivan said the ISRO is working with ocean engineering groups to provide marine information services for the fishing community to help them in navigation and identifying potential fishing zones in Indian waters.
Delivering the presidential address, DRDO chairman S Christopher said the DRDO is keen to enter into fruitful collaboration with academia and industries in the country and abroad to ensure the synergy thus generated will propel faster progress of the country in the field of defence sciences and technology.
''We should review our knowledge by sharing it with others and discussing it with experts," he said.
Padma awardee Arogyaswami J Paulraj from Stanford University in the US delivered the keynote address.
NPOL director S Kedarnath Shenoy said the thrust areas of NPOL's research and development are signal processing and imaging, underwater acoustics, electronics, engineering systems, transducers, materials, and oceanography.
"NPOL has made it possible for the country to master the technologies and come up with indigenous innovations and solutions and its success has contributed to the nation’s self-reliance in these vital fields," he said.
V K Aatre, former director of NPOL and scientific adviser to the Defence Minister; Naval Systems, and Materials DG Samir Kamat and Rear Admiral Antony George also spoke. ICONS convener T Mukundan proposed the vote of thanks.
The conference, on its first day, held Sonar technology workshops and tutorials for students and young researchers on topics, including underwater acoustics instrumentation, modelling, ocean modelling, signal processing and sensor network.
Manell E Zakharia, French Naval Academy (Ecole Navale); Ajith Bhuddi, Application Engineer, COMSOL Multiphysics, Bengaluru; Finitha K C, scientist 'G', avionics, VSSC, ISRO, Thiruvananthapuram and Monika Agarwal, Centre for Applied Research in Electronics, IIT, Delhi led the sessions.