Indian Railways will now deploy drones to control traffic and monitor rescue ops

The Indian Railways keep coming up with brilliant ideas from time to time to make things manageable and easy. Now the Indian Railways is planning to use drone-mounted cameras to keep a check on traffic, rescue operation activities, track inspection and infrastructure related projects.
The news was announced via press release issued by the Indian Railways. As per the press statement, the West Central Railways (WCR) headquarters in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh will be the first to get the equipment and trial runs will be conducted after the procurement. The trials have been done in Jabalpur, Bhopal and Kota.

WCR CPRO Gunjan Gupta was quoted saying, “We have bought one drone from a Mumbai-based company at Rs 7,00,000, and trial at all the three places have been conducted by the same drone. We are also in a process of buying two more drones to meet the increasing requirements.”

Another Western Railway official said that it is a latest technology and they are in a process to finalise the tender. In fact, the railway officials are hoping that in few months time, they’ll be close the deal.

As per press statement, the drone in question is the ‘Netra’, which is a lightweight, autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) used for keeping a close watch and investigation purpose. This device is a brainchild of joint collaboration of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and IdeaForge a Mumbai based firm.

Netra drone is mainly used by paramilitary forces such as Border Security Force (BSF) and Central Reserve Police Force, to name a few.