India's longest drone flight in Haryana for HPCL

New Delhi: A robotics and drone company has claimed that it has conducted the longest drone flight of 51 km in India to survey the pipeline of the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) in Haryana.

Omnipresent Robot Technologies Founder and CEO Aakash Sinha said the 51 km-long flight of Omni Hansa V5 took place on November 3. "I believe the previous longest drone flight in India was of 42 km," he said. The entire flight -- from take-off to landing -- was fully autonomous, which means it was on auto-pilot, he said. "We had a tracker mechanism on the drone. We could track it over our 4G network with our tracker," he noted.

HPCL wants Omnipresent to extend the range of Omni Hansa V5 to 100-200 km, he said. Omni Hansa V5 can take off and land like a helicopter so it does not need a runway. However, once it is in air, it flies like a plane, Sinha stated. This drone is called hybrid fixed-wing VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) drone, he explained.

"We successfully completed India's longest drone flight. We flew the drone for 51 km for one of our pipeline clients HPCL. It was a BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flight. This is a record in India," he claimed. He said the flight took place to survey the pipeline of HPCL that runs between Delhi and Haryana. "It (pipeline) starts from Bahadurgarh (in Haryana)," he added. Officials of HPCL were also present during the flight demonstration, he stated.

The flight went up to the height of maximum 400 feet, as permitted by the rules of aviation regulator DGCA.

Sinha said Omnipresent has registered 100 per cent growth in last one year and it is expected to grow three to five times in the next 3-4 years. The company aims to reach the target of Rs 1,000 crore revenue in the next four years, he added. Currently, the company is also working with Indian e-commerce giants that want to deploy drones for delivering items.