Thursday 17 January 2019

Thank You , Shri Jayant Sinhaji

For what ?

For accepting my suggestion to install “ Safety Chips “ in drones which will enable Regulator to disable a drone remotely in case it turns rogue

Where did you find this acceptance ?

Today’s Economic Times carries following news report :

Drone companies asked to install safety chip to avoid mishaps

- which reads :

“ The government wants drone manufacturers to add a chip at the hardware level to ensure that security agencies can disable the drone remotely in case it turns rogue “

What precisely was your suggestion ?

On 03 Sept 2018 , I sent to Shri Sinha, following email :

Drone – a – Charya

- where , one of my suggestions [ among many ] , was :

“ Controllers ( sitting in DTC ) will have facility to immediately “ Ground /

Immobilize “ any drone at any time , if security is about to be compromised or if

any drone is flying outside of its “ Geo Fence “

{ DTC = Drone Traffic Control / Geo Fence = Designated Air Space for a given drone }

Did you make any other suggestions ?

There were quite a few – important ones being :

· Each drone to be assigned a unique Drone Number

· Each drone would be embedded with GPS and Internet Connection

· Using a Mobile App , drone owner to file its flight plan / location / duration /

height / drone category / purpose etc and the Regulator Web site grants clearance

for take off

· Web site of the Drone Regulator will continuously track / monitor the flight of

each and every drone ( all over India ) on a monitor screen ( similar to tracking

of Airplanes in an Air Traffic Control ( ATC ) room . Constant contact is the key !

· National Trust Centre , to develop a software and make it mandatory for all drone

manufacturers to pre-install this software into the drones before shipping out . This

is described at : Swarm-O-Drone

· Frequent violation of the Flight Rules , should lead to “ Black-listing “ of any

particular drone and it should be “ immobilized “ ( for varying periods , depending

upon the frequency / severity of violation )

· A very important “ Security Feature “ must ensure that the device ( drone ) by itself

on its own , does not transmit any data to the drone manufacturer nor to any

owner / licensee of an Operating System ( eg : Google’s Android / Apple’s iOS etc )

Does it seem that your other suggestions too, might get accepted ?

I get a feeling that Shri Jayant Sinhaji is favorably inclined to implement all of my suggestions , as evident from following recent news reports :

Online registration for drone operation starts

Drone policy 2.0: India pitches for optimum utilisation of drones

Extract :

The draft note has suggested developing designated 'drone corridors' for uninterrupted movement of drones, developing airworthiness standards independent of operational and environmental risks, limiting life-cycle of drones, obtaining "Proof of Concept" certificate to operate drones during night and obtaining professional certificates for operating independent drones.

"A UAS Traffic Management (UTM) system should be devised to provide hyper-local and real-time information for managing UAS induced traffic, especially in the Drone Corridors," the document read.