Center of Excellence for Capacity Building, Training and Design of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: An initiative by Govt. of UP
Center of excellence for autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles is envisaged as an interdisciplinary center that would bring all stakeholders from across the state under one umbrella to initiate capacity building, training and design of UAV / Drone technology through statewide joint effort between the users, developers, researchers, manufacturers and service providers.
Who can apply:
- Startups registered with DPIIT
- Startups who are working in the area of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles / Drones.
- Startup who wishes to get support for product development / testing / design verification / other technical support and consultancy
Company Type
- The start-up must be incorporated as a
- Private Limited company
- Registered Partnership Firm
- Limited Liability Partnership
- The date of registration/incorporation must not be beyond 10 years
Annual Turnover
Start-up should have an annual turnover not exceeding 3 crores.
Original Entity
Focus Area
- Design of UAV
- Development of payload for UAVs
- Development of sub-systems and components
- Application of UAVs
- Counter UAV systems
- Manufacturing of UAV and UAV components
- Development of software with application to UAVs
Application process
- Step 1: Call for application
- Step 2: Roadshows for program outreach
- Step 3: Online Evaluation of applications
- Step 4: Monitoring & evaluation of start-ups
- Step 5: Support under COE
- Step 6: Expert Evaluation of filtered application
Duration
Support to be provided for 2-3 years as per needs.
No physical incubation is needed, physical incubation support may be provided if needed through IIT Kanpur incubator.
Offerings
Significant resources have been created at IIT Kanpur which would be leveraged by CoE to also provide facility towards drone testing for various stakeholders. The details of some of these facilities that is already available is as follows:
- Helicopter and VTOL Laboratory: It is state of the art facility with large instrumented indoor flight-testing space equipped with motion capture system to enable testing of small UAVs for purpose of (1) Drone Electronics (2) GNC Algorithms & Simulation and (3) Aeromechanics. The gust wall facility is planned to be setup here to augment the existing facility to make it truly world class where advanced research and training can be completed to check the performance of small drones in presence of gust.
- Flight Laboratory: IIT Kanpur has 1 km long runway and DGCA approved flight-testing area which is unique in entire country and provides most appropriate setup for various users to flight test their UAVs. This facility has already attracted various startups and even established companies to come and use this facility for testing their drones in controller environment.
- National Wind Tunnel Facility: This is an industry standard wind tunnel facility which is of immense use for Aeromechanics applications and to support design and development activities for novel UAV designs. It is already used extensively by DRDO and various companies across the globe for high quality aerodynamic testing.
- SIIC / FIRST and Technopark: IIT Kanpur has well established facility for supporting startups and for engaging with established companies. The incubator at IITK called FIRST is currently mentoring four startups in UAV domain and Technopark is housing another UAV company. The facilities for incubation available at FIRST would be used and is open to all Indian nationals irrespective of their background and enable complete access to various facilities offered by IIT Kanpur. Startups incubated at IITK are also provides with physical space and other infrastructural support to take them forward.
In summary, through the establishment of this CoE, the existing drone testing infrastructure would be easily made available to various stakeholders to enable conduction of relevant UAV testing activities as well as support new startups to consolidate their activities and become an established company in quick time. Through the CoE, any company / startup interested in using these facilities would be allowed access at the same nominal charges as that offered to startups and companies physically incubated or formally associated with IIT. The same facilities would also be made available to companies associated with UPEIDA
