First drone racing event in India held at Amalthea in Gandhinagar

Palaj, Gandhinagar: Amalthea, the annual technical summit of IIT Gandhinagar (IITGN) organized the first drone racing event in India on October 22-23, 2016. The event was held in association with Indian Drone Racing League (IDRL) who brought together drone enthusiasts all over India to participate in the event. Due to this event, a large community of professional pilots who practice First-person view (FPV) drone racing has been been formed. Some of these pilots have more than 8 years of experience of flying quadcopters.

In the event, 4 pilots raced at a time. Each pilot had to complete 5 laps of the race-course while passing through checkposts, and the time for the best lap was considered for elimination. The qualifying pilots were selected for the next rounds. The pilots were using first-person viewer quadcopters. These quadcopters have a transmitter that transmits the video being captured by the camera attached to the quadcopters over radio waves to the pilot’s glasses. With the help of the glasses, the pilots control their quadcopters with the radio-controllers.

These quadcopters can easily reach upto a height of 500 feet. In the open without interference, some of these qaudcopters can attain a height of upto a kilometer. The quadcopters are extremely fast and agile with a maximum speed of over 100 km/hr. Considering all these paramters, safety is a major issue in such an event. Amalthea, IIT GN had taken care of the safety of the pilots and the audience. The race-course was more than 300 feet in length and the quadcopters had been restricted to a flying height of 50 feet. Also the race course was covered by nets on all sides to ensure the safety of the pilots and the audience.

Some of the most widely-known drone pilots in India including Ken Kouwang from Assam, Pravesh T M and Mateen Baig from Bangalore also took part in the event. Bhavesh Sangani. Bhavesh Sangani, Siddharth Kumanduri and Manjunath M. from Team Bangalore stood first, second and third respectivey, while Ken Kouwang from Assam stood fourth. Karan Kamdar, the founder and CEO of IDRL was also present with the IDRL team, who were managing the event along with Team Amalthea. Karan said “Being the first drone race in India, the event was largely successful. Thanks to Team Amalthea for organizing this event, and we hope to continue this event every year. More events like this will be conducted in the future.”