NIT Rourkela Secures Patent for Breakthrough Autonomous Drone Mapping Tech

Researchers from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, have secured a patent for "BHU-MANACHITRA", an autonomous real-time land mapping drone system, officials said.

- Press Trust of India

The developed system uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology to automatically generate land maps without requiring internet connectivity, external computers or manual interventions, they added.

Used to identify farmlands, forests, vegetation, and urban areas, land mapping is essential for the geographic governance of any country.

It serves as the basis for planning, infrastructure development, natural resource management, and environmental monitoring.

In India, land mapping relies heavily on manual surveys, which often take weeks or months to produce unstable maps.

In recent times, drones have been adopted to image distant terrains. However, the captured images still need lab processing, a time-consuming process, to get a readable map.