Drone Certification Scheme

In News 

• Recently, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) notified the Drone Certification Scheme to make certification of drones simpler, faster and transparent. 

About 

• The drone certification scheme notified under Rule 7 of the liberalized Drone Rules, 2021.
• The certification criteria mentioned in the drone certification scheme (DCS) will be applicable to indigenous drone manufacturers, assemblers as well as importers.
• Features: 
  • A multi-stakeholder steering committee (MSC) chaired by a known professional, who is respected by government and industry alike, will oversee the scheme, along with a QCI (Quality Control of India) secretariat. 
    • This MSC will also be supported by a technical committee (TC) and a certification committee (CC) that will be constituted by the QCI
  • The manufacturer, while submitting an application for certification of a drone, will have to submit various data and test results on topics such as weight, type of launch and recovery mechanism installed, speed, range, endurance, battery performance, type of material used in construction
• Objective:
  •  To provide the minimum requirements for airworthiness — safety and security requirements — for drones and enable their evaluation for certification.

Other related Initiatives 

• The government has been working to establish a world-leading drone ecosystem in India, which will create the physical and digital infrastructure to support safe, efficient and secure access to the Indian airspace by millions of drones.
•  Liberalised Drone Rules, 2021 :  The Ministry of Civil Aviation(MoCA ) notified liberalised Drone Rules, 2021.
• PLI scheme  : The MoCA approved a PLI scheme in september 2021  for drones and drone components with an allocation of Rs 120 crore spread over three financial years .
  • The total amount allocated for the PLI scheme for drones and drone components is INR 120 crore spread over three financial years.  This amount is nearly double the combined turnover of all domestic drone manufacturers in FY 2020-21. 

• The Ministry of Civil Aviation and Directorate General of Civil Aviation has granted conditional exemption for Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) usage to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (MoAFW)
• Digital Sky Platform’ : It is a first of its kind central portal that implements “no permission, no take-off” (NPNT).
  • It is a novel system of software-based self-enforcement to minimize deviations from the Civil Aviation Regulations in the country.

• Medicine from the sky:
  • The Telangana state government has selected 16 primary healthcare centres (PHCs) spread around Vikarabad area hospital for pilot testing the ambitious project ‘Medicine from the sky’.
  • It is the first-of-its-kind project involving the delivery of medicines through multiple drones.

• Rustom-II:
  • India’s indigenous  Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE)Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) development programme (Rustom-II ) achieved an important milestone by reaching an altitude of 25,000 feet and an endurance of 10 hours.
    • With some delays in development, the Rustom-2 last year successfully flew for eight hours at an altitude of 16,000 feet.

• i-Drone : The ICMR’s Drone Response and Outreach in North East (i-Drone) was launched in Manipur.
  • The i-Drone was designed to overcome vaccine delivery challenges in hard-to-reach terrains of India, by deploying unmanned aerial vehicles or drones to these areas. 

Source :BS