How drones can bring a second Industrial Revolution in India

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have been an active part of military applications for a long time with the core purpose of surveillance and reconnaissance. However, enterprises only began using them for optimizing operations around a decade ago.

Presently, there are over 200 drone-based start-ups in India and counting. Drone technology has proven its merit in industrial applications. Additionally, this can have a direct impact on the Indian economy in a multitude of ways.

Presently, the services sector is the largest contributor to India’s GDP with a GVA of 54%, followed by the industry sector (26%), agriculture and allied sector (20%). With the growing mechanization and automation of industries, India will need to see a drastic shift from unskilled labour to a technically proficient workforce. The service sector can help drive this change and generate lakhs of high-skilled jobs. Thus, in the country’s ambitious goal of becoming a $5 trillion economic powerhouse, the tech industry is going to play a leading role. According to a survey by MarketsandMarkets, the drone analytics market is expected to be worth $2.1 billion by the end of 2022 and to grow to $6.5 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 25.5%.

Enterprise drone solutions are carving a new industry in India. The primary way of optimizing operations, cutting costs, and improving productivity is through collecting data. Conventional data collection techniques (manned aircraft, satellites, and manual surveys) are time-consuming, resource intensive, and prone to error. With drones, large-scale data acquisition can be carried out at a fraction of the cost, with superior accuracy, and significantly lower turnaround times. Additionally, integrated cloud platforms take this process to the next level. It enables you to not just harvest data but also process and analyzeitfor specific business intelligence immediately.

While drones can serve multiple industries, presently their use cases in selected industries are creating a sizeable impact.

Urban and rural development

Building sustainable cities and villages is a critical requirement of the 21st century for India. This is important to improve the quality of life, and overall happiness index, and build resilience against climate-related natural disasters. Present-day drones have the technological capability to accelerate this development. At present, over 64% of the total population of India lives in rural areas. Similarly, countries like Bangladesh also have a rural population of 61%.

Thus, access to necessities such as water pipelines, electrification, agricultural management, and accurate land ownership records form the crux of the solutions drones provide for the rural population.

Addressing these challenges can help elevate the quality of life for most of the population. Lands need to be levelled to prevent water runoffs. Drone data helps conduct accurate elevation analysis and slope assessment. In Madhya Pradesh, a lift irrigation project was conducted over 1000 sq. Km of the area by using drone-captured data. Additionally, the Rajasthan government also used drone data to design watersheds over an area stretching over 3000 sq. Km.

These models are extremely helpful in demarcating geographic coordinates of lands (SVAMITVAand DILRMP), planning water pipelines (Jal Jeevan Yojana), optimizing optical fibre cable distribution (BharatNet), sewage planning, levelling and for rooftop solar radiation potential mapping. For instance, rooftop solar mapping can improve the energy efficiency of both cities and villages and eliminate the need for subsidies.

Similarly, urban sprawls have a distinct set of challenges such as road construction management, real estate, property tax assessment, city planning, garbage management (Swachh Bharat Mission), identifying illegal encroachments, and much more. Drone data can solve everything from inventory management and progress monitoring on construction sites to greenery planning. Thus, authorities will be able to build impeccable 3D point clouds of cities for the creation of smart infrastructure and more resilient cities.

Mining

One of the largest applications of drone solutions is in the mining sector. Iron ore and coal mining are crucial industries for the Indian economy. They require several complex periodical assessments such as volumetric analysis, haul road analysis, stockpile measurements, safety, and environmental checks. More importantly, the amended MCDR 2021 guidelines of the Government of India states that mines with a lease area greater than 50 hectares are required to submit drone survey images of the mine and up to 100 meters outside the lease boundary every year. Therefore, drones and cloud-based processing are necessary to fulfill this critical industry requirement.

The mining industry requires solutions that are scalable and implementable into their existing IT infrastructure. Thus, drones help solve all the key challenges by cutting time in data acquisition and enabling advanced analytics that was not possible with manual methods.

Additionally, an end-to-end infrastructure can enhance the benefits drones offer. Conventionally, this entire process can take over a month. Starting from collecting data, relaying it back to data labs, processing it, and reviewing it. During this phase, there’s always a risk of data loss.

Water, soil and forest conservation

Drones can also help address the requirements of SDGs in several industries. By optimizing operations and environmental compliance, they can help industries become more sustainable. Advanced analytics from drone-captured data is helpful in carbon-footprint estimation. Therefore, by using drones, industries can keep their carbon emissions in check.

A direct application of drones is in forest conservation and afforestation efforts. By mapping large areas of forest land, you can perform assessments such as counting the number of trees, measuring canopy size, estimating biomass loss, tracking endangered species, and evaluating the health of reforested areas. Aerial data can also give us detailed insight into depleting water catchments and the most efficient ways of restoring groundwater reserves through watershed development.

Therefore, by using drones, environmental conservation can take place right from the grassroots level to a full-fledged forest mapping operation.

Renewable Energy

A shift to renewable energy is decisive in our fight against climate change. However, a key factor for implementing sustainable solutions is efficiency. While the energy efficiency of renewables such as solar and wind is increasing, human error can limit the power output. Drones can monitor the construction and operation of solar power plants to ensure they’re always providing peak performance.

Inspection of windmills or hydroelectric generators is difficult due to safety considerations. Identifying structural damage on windmills is critical for maintenance and improving efficiency. Therefore, drones will play a vital role in the scheduled preventive inspection of the existing and future energy infrastructure.

Drone technology has the potential to drive down the carbon footprint of several industries by providing unmatched business intelligence. Thus, India must lead the way in fulfilling its sustainability commitments being the fastest-growing economy.

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