February 24, 2014 : A mini quad-rotor drone developed and built by a team of students at IIT Bombay is making waves, standing out in a national competition held by the Ministry of Science & Technology. The MICAV 14 competition has the team emerge runners up with their 'Chaturpaksha' drone, which previously bagged third place in the international IMAV 2013 competition in France last September. Develpment on the drone began just over a year ago in January 2013.

"The indigenously developed and manufactured carbon fibre structure has been optimized over numerous iterations, high quality neddymium magnet motors and highly efficient propellers have been carefully chosen through simulations," says the team, comprising Nikunj Kothari, Prasanna Shevare, Gaurav Tendolkar and Chinmay Das. The Chaturpaksha auto-pilot is also optimised for indoor autonomous flight. Along with such products as the DRDO-IdeaForge Netra drone, the Chaturpaksha could evince interest among the armed and paramilitary forces, as well as police services across the country, which have unanimously expressed requirements of technology to meet urban warfare and short-range intelligence gathering.