A robotic drone that can send real-time video of ships and other underwater structures to help with their repair and maintenance has won a prestigious US-centred hardware start-up competition held in India for the first time at Kochi-based electronics incubator Maker Village.
EyeROV, developed by Johns T Mathai and Kannappa Palaniappan P, was selected from seven finalists out of 35 applicants in the Kochi leg of AlphaLab Gear National Hardware Cup, the competition’s first pilot in India to evaluate hardware tech start-ups which are ready to launch their products in the next 3-6 months.
The EyeROV drone can be navigated up to a depth of 50 metres to take real-time HD video to examine ship hulls or undersea cables or bridge moorings, eliminating the need for costlier and riskier manual inspection by divers.
The drone, which was tested on India’s first solar ferry at Vaikom, Kerala, offers high manoeuvring capability at low cost, and can be put to various uses — inspections of ship hulls, ports, dams and nuclear power plants, search and rescue operations, naval mine detection and ocean studies.
By Baishakhi Dutta
