An unmanned helicopter has been developed by IIT-Kanpur students

The invention of unmanned helicopter is a great achievement accomplished by a team of students who are postgraduate in aerospace field from IIT-Kanpur. They successfully could develop such a helicopter which doesn’t need any pilot to fly in the sky. Not only that, it is capable to fly constantly for 24 hours with a goods of 80 kg. It is named as “Vibhram”. The students could be able to win third place in the category of graduate students of 34th Annual Student Design Competition. This competition was arranged by the American Helicopter Society (AHS). Several teams from different universities took part in this competition such as University of Liverpool, Nanjing University of Aeronautics, Georgia Tech, and Astronautics including other world’s famous institutions. 

Meet Karthik S. (Team leader, MTech), Rahul Ramanujam (Team technical leader, PhD), Ramdas (PhD), Diksha Aggarwal (MTech), Sakshi Gupta (MTech), Avinash Shet (MTech), Vishesh Kumar Singh (MTech), Naba Kishore Routray (MTech) who developed 'Vibhram' helicopter under the guidance of Assistant Professor Abhishek of Aerospace engineering department and Prof C. Venkatesan (Emeritus Fellow Professor in Aerospace Department.

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Image credit A team of students of IIT-Kanpur who made the design of unmanned helicopter

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Talking to TOI, Assistant Prof Abhishek said, "The design of Vibhram is very innovative. It has novel dissimilar coaxial rotor concept which was conceived for this competition by PhD student Rahul Ramanujam (a patent has already been filed on this concept). This rotor concept has been predicted to be more efficient than any existing helicopter concept such as conventional (single main rotor and tail rotor) and regular coaxial helicopters by 15-30%. This revolutionary new design is expected to have a strong impact on the future of helicopter technology. A research paper on the design authored by Rahul would be presented in September at European Rotorcraft Forum in Milan, Italy."

He said that such a type of a helicopter design does not exist anywhere in the world and its prototype has been developed by the students in only six months starting in January this year. "We were required to submit a 100 page report, an executive summary of the project and a video of the operational helicopter which we had provided to AHS for taking part in the competition. The hardwork by the students bore fruits and they won the third prize", he added.