DRDO NETRA

Netra
Netra, at the exhibition of 100th Indian Science Congress in Kolkata.
Role	Mini-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
National origin	India
Manufacturer	IdeaForge
Designer	DRDO
First flight	3 July 2010
Introduction	30 January 2012
Status	Active
Primary users	Central Reserve Police Force Border Security Force
Produced	2010-present
Number built	24
Unit cost	₹2 million (US$29,720) to ₹5.5 million (US$81,730)

The DRDO Netra is an Indian, light-weight, autonomous UAV for surveillance and reconnaissance operations. It has been jointly developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation's Research and Development Establishment (R&DE), and IdeaForge, a Mumbai-based private firm.

The Netra is a lightweight UAV, constructed of carbon fiber composites, that uses quadcopters to provide lift and control giving a VTOL capability. It has no moving parts other than the rotors, motors and transmissions, and hence it requires very low maintenance. The use of carbon-fibre has resulted in a light weight of 1.5 kg (3 lb), which makes the Netra very portable. A backpack case allows operators to carry the system to field locations to serve as the base station. It also contains the power supply, military-grade controller, hand-held operator console and the communication systems.

Netra can be launched from a small clearing, and it can fly up to a distance of 2.5 km from its take-off point. The operational altitude of the UAV is 200 m. With an on-board wireless transmitter, it can carry out surveillance in an area of 1.5 km Line of Sight (LOS) at the height of 300 m, for 30 minutes on a single battery charge. It has a high resolution CCD camera with a pan/tilt and zoom to facilitate wider surveillance and can also carry a thermal camera for night operations. The zoom-in camera can identify human activity up to 500 m away, and can send live video feed of objects within a radius of 5 km. The images are sent through a local wireless network to laptops for monitoring.

Flight and navigation is independent of user-input, and is controlled by an on-board auto-pilot with the help of anti-collision sensors. The user interface offers waypoint navigation, in which the user specifies the location of the target and the UAV automatically flies to that location. A built-in fail-safe allows it to return to base if there is loss of communication with the controller or if the battery is low in power. The UAV cannot yet operate in rain and further research is being done to make it operable in all weather conditions.