A student innovation team from the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Manipal, has developed a pair of advanced agricultural drones capable of identifying pest-infested areas in crops and spraying pesticides only where required, significantly reducing costs, time and chemical usage for farmers.

The team, known as Manas, showcased their twin drones — Cleo and Freya — during the seven-day Drone Application and Research Programme (NIDAR) held at Gautam Buddha University.

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Team leader Asavari Kausal explained that drone Cleo performs real-time scanning of crops to detect pest infestation and instantly relays the data to Freya, which then sprays pesticide precisely on the affected spots. This targeted spraying method eliminates the need to treat entire fields, leading to major savings in manpower, resources and time, especially for large-scale farmers.

Cleo also calculates the exact quantity of pesticide required during the scan. This information is displayed instantly on the mobile application connected to the drone, enabling accurate and efficient spraying operations.

The project has been jointly developed by team members Bhuvan Chand Ragni, Samya, Anoop Kamath, Anant Sarkar Gupta, Michal Maria, Parth, Taman Raja, Subh Keswani, and Aryan Pagaria.

The team further stated that the drone’s mobile application will provide information in all major Indian languages, including Hindi, English, Urdu, Gujarati, and Malayalam, as well as several international languages such as those spoken in the United States, Russia and China, making the technology accessible to farmers across regions.

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The NIDAR programme is being organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, with support from the Drone Federation of India. It is the country’s first national-level initiative of its kind, where students are addressing real-world challenges such as disaster management, geotagging, emergency supply delivery, automated flight systems and precision agriculture.

The winning team of the programme will receive a cash prize of Rs 40 lakh.