An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or uncrewed aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which include additionally a ground-based controller and a system of communications with the UAV.
What is MARAAL?
UAV’s have recently attracted significant amount of attraction due to their wide spread application.
Be it reconnaissance, surveillance, mapping or rescue missions, UAV’s are indeed proving to be a versatile and cost-effective solution. This has resulted in a lot of research effort being put into making UAVs more and more robust and increasing their efficiencies in terms of range, power consumption, and endurance etc.
The MARAAL is a series of solar powered UAVs that were developed in India by aerospace department of IIT Kanpur. These are multipurpose UAVs, primarily focused on requirements mentioned above.
MARAAL-1 UAV
MARAAL-1 is the first Indian solar powered UAV. It is a low-altitude long endurance solar-electric powered UAV which increases the endurance with the additional usage of solar cells in combination with batteries to power the UAV.
This project was sponsored by Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) for the feasibility study of the solar powered aircraft in Indian atmospheric conditions. The test results of this UAV encouraged the researchers and they developed another solar powered UAV MARAAL-2 having improved capabilities.
It has completed several successful test flights starting with its maiden flight on 1st Feb 2016 to help researchers gather useful real-time flight performance data.
Specifications of MARAAL-1 UAV
| SN | Property | Quantity |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Weight | 16 Kg |
| 2 | Power Required to Cruise | 210 Watt |
| 3 | Solar Power Extraction | 170 Watt (Avg, 1st March 2016) |
| 4 | Service Ceiling | 500m AGL |
| 5 | Endurance | 11 Hrs |
| 6 | Gliding Ratio(L/D) | 18 |
| 7 | Payload | 5 Kg |
MARAAL-2 UAV
Salient features of MARRAL-2 UAV's:
- Fully solar powered
- Optimised for extraction of maximum solar power
- No trim control deflections
- Modular
- Fully autonomous operations with pre-set patterns
- In-flight destination update capability
- Ruggedized and expandable Ground Control Station
- Low IR and Radar signature
- Optimized aerodynamics makes this power efficient
- Intellegent power management system
- Less complex assembly allows very low MTTR
- Can perform uninterruptedly without any service
- Night landing
Specifications of MARAAL-2 UAV
| SN | Name | Quantity |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Weight | 12 Kg |
| 2 | Power Required to Cruise | 160 Watt |
| 3 | Solar Power Extraction | 245 Watt (Avg, 5th March 2017) |
| 4 | Service Ceiling | 1000m AGL |
| 5 | Endurance | 18 Hrs |
| 6 | Gliding Ratio(L/D) | 20 |
| 7 | Payload | 7 Kg |
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