BotLab Dynamics, a startup incubated at IIT Delhi, has been working on building robotics for more than 5 years. The drones made by the IIT-Delhi startup lit up the sky at the Beating Retreat ceremony and also this Republic Day.
Sarita Ahalawat, co-founder of BotLab Dynamics, while exclusively speaking to ANI said, “BotLab Dynamics is a start-up incubated at IIT Delhi. We have been working on building robotics for more than 5 years. We have been specified in the drone domain. Initially, we optimised a single drone domain but eventually, it occurred to us that it would be more useful to connect multiple drones.”
“So with that idea that we can put LED light in a drone, it can be a useful formation is when the Ministry of Defence contacted us we were asked to do a thousand drones light show on the occasion of Beating Retreat,” she said.
Ahalawat said they built their own drone hardware and associated software for the last five years. “We have been building all the essential components of the drone. Three important components, flight controller which is the brain of the drone, GPS which gives the precision and the motor controller– all the components we built ourselves indigenously in the IIT Delhi. With that capability we knew that we could scale it up but of course challenges were there,” said the co-founder of BotLab Dynamics.
Speaking about the Beating Retreat preparation, Sarita said, “When The Ministry of Defence asked us, we were only at 100 drones. Imagine from 100 drones we have to go 1,000 and we had very little time. Being at IIT we love to take challenges– we had to work with chip shortage as due to COVID the supply chain was broken. But because of our skills, we managed to take different shapes and redesign our circuits. So in six months, we planned well and we were able to execute it not just in terms of hardware.”