Saturday 3 August 2013
Aarush-X1 is the result of an industry-academia collaboration between Lockheed Martin and
Delhi Technological University. The Unmanned Aerial System has been designed and fabricated by a group of undergraduate students of the university, who received timely guidance from mentors in the faculty and Lockheed Martin. The UAS has been designed according to the
constraints imposed by urban environments, making the system invaluable for ISR in cities like
Delhi and Mumbai. The system, in fact, can be modified to adapt to specific mission-dependent requirements.
The UAS was unveiled by Dr. V.K.Saraswat, Director General, D.R.D.O, on November 2nd,
2012, at the Lokarpan Ceremony held at the India Habitat Center. The ceremony was presided
over by Dr. D.N. Reddy (title), and Dr.R.P.Aggarwal. The event witnessed a small presentation
by the student project manger and team captain, outlining the design and fabrication process
adopted by the team. Mr. John Sheehan, who along with Dr. Peter Drewes, mentored the students, highlighted the key accomplishments of the project, and congratulated the students on their achievement. Mr. Abhay Paranjape, (title) also attended the ceremony and emphasized on the importance of the sustenance of student effort, and long term relationships between industry and academia , in his talk.
Dr. V.K.Saraswat lauded the student effort and expressed a desire to nurture the student talent. He also outlined some major capabilities that are demanded of current Unmanned Air Systems, like stealth and payload compatibility.The Lokarpan Ceremony was also attended by representatives
from HAL, NTRO, Army, IAF and DST.
Team UAS-DTU at public flight of Aarush-X1
The ceremony concluded with an invitation to all the attendees to witness the First Public Flight
of Aarush-X1, which was to be held the following day (November 3rd) at Karnal Institute of
Civil Aviation, Haryana.
The Flight Day was attended by engineers from HAL and NTRO amongst others.
The UAS did a single sortie for about 3 minutes. Telemetry and real time video, were displayed
at the portable ground station. The UAS was taxied to the viewing area, after the landing, for a
visual inspection by the attendees, which was followed by a question and answer session.
Team UAS-DTU with Lockheed Martin representatives Mr. John Sheehan and Dr Peter Drewes
