Drones to implement welfare schemes: KJ George

Team Udayavani, Aug 3, 2018, 10:59 AM IST

• Drones for agriculture, urban development and police civic operations
• Scientific town planning and to monitor traffic movement

Bengaluru: Drones will be deployed by the Karnataka government to implement welfare schemes in the fields of agriculture, urban development and police civic operations. Rs. 2.5 crore has been granted by the state government or the implementation of the pilot project.  A policy to make drones locally is also on the anvil.

Information Technology and Biotechnology Minister K J George said, “”As we are keen to use drone technology for better governance, we will soon have a policy to design and make them (drones) locally so that more can be used in implementing various programmes and schemes for the welfare of the people.”

Kosaba-Hobli village in Haveri district will witness the pilot drone project in agriculture over a 200 square kilometre area to assess the crop health, yield estimation and crop types suitable. The operations over the crop will be done for three months in the present Kharif crop.

Scientific town planning

In October, the drones will be tested for its use in urban development through a project taken up in Bantwal town in Dakshina Kannada district to prepare a detailed map for systematic and scientific town planning. The drone will also be used to carry out property tax estimation.

Drones to monitor traffic movement

Next week onwards, traffic movement in chosen areas of Bengaluru will be managed with the help of drones. A pilot project has already been initiated by Mr. George on Thursday, August 2^nd.

Vehicular movement in chosen parts of the city would be monitored through drones during peak hours under the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) scheme.

“The real-time data will be passed on to the police officers concerned who would take a call on methods of traffic management,” said Akash Sinha, CEO of Delhi-based Omnipresent Robot Tech, which has been chosen to execute the project. He explained that through the drones, the traffic police will not only identifying the number of vehicles passing through a particular stretch, the speed of vehicles and their category, but also their number plates.

Management of vehicular traffic through drone surveillance had already been implemented in Andhra Pradesh. Initially, Bengaluru would get two drones and depending upon the requirement, the number could go up to 20 drones.