According to thehindu.com, since march, in collaboration with authorities in Telangana, India, the start-up Marut Drones has employed 19 drones to carry out disinfection and sanitisation in 11 districts including Nalgonda, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Kamareddy and Sangareddy.
Marut’s craft can carry up to 10 litres of disinfectant and cover about 20 kilometres. So far, the firm has disinfected 1900 kilometres with 9800 litres of chemical. Marut Drones was founded by IIT Guwahati alumni Prem Kumar Vislawath, Suraj Peddi and Saikumar Chinthala. And were initially designed to aid sustainable agriculture, reforestation and tackling mosquito menace on lakes. Since the pandemic the company has changed tack.
“We had to re-engineer our drones for covid-19 operations,” explained Prem. “Drones can cover large areas in less time and recently, we demonstrated how medical and essential supplies can also be delivered to far-flung areas through drones. We are waiting for clearance to be able to do this.”
In the coming months, as Telangana hopes to gradually ease lockdown measures, the company plans to scale up operations and work with the authorities for night-time surveillance of different zones, use thermal cameras to spot possible infection clusters, and supply emergency medical needs.
The Company are keen to collaborate with similar start-ups that use unmanned craft to help both the public and private sector in thermal analysis of crowds. Drones retrofitted with cameras can detect high body temperatures in people from a distance.
Registered in 2019, Marut Drones is featured in Forbes’ The 30 under 30 Asia list and is among the top 25 trending technologies listed by AGNIi (Accelerating Growth of New India’s Innovations) for fighting against covid-19.
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