Zuppa unveils 'Made in India' Unmanned Traffic Monitoring

Sree Sai Aerotech Innovations Pvt Ltd, also known as Zuppa, has unveiled what it claimed is India's first and only 'Made in India' Unmanned Traffic Monitoring System (UTM) at the Aero India 2019 show here.

Zuppa is into fully integrated design-to-manufacture of embedded electronics used in Drones, Vehicle Telematics, ADAS and precision agriculture.

UTMs are electronic systems used to monitor and track flights of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones and form a critical link in the process of on-boarding the currently illegal and unregulated drones into the regulatory framework formulated by regulators, the company said.

Lack of regulatory framework for drone use in India between 2014 and 2018 since the DGCA ban of October 2014 has been effectively exploited by the Chinese to populate 5,00,000 unregulated and illegal drones in India, it said in a release.

These unregulated drones pose a potential threat to the national security, unless on-boarded and their flights monitored and controlled by the authorities, it said.

Zuppa UTM is the first attempt to develop Indian manufacturing and technology capabilities to thwart the "growing menace" of Chinese drones, which are a perfect example of sensitive 'dual-use technology gone wild', the company said.

"There are multitudes of possible ways that unregulated drones may cause security threat and disruptions in India if we don't come up with indigenous, affordable drone and counter-drone technologies and develop manufacturing capabilities with policy and regulatory support, Sai Pattabiram, the company's CEO and Founder, said.

Zuppa's UTM is the first step for creating a "Made in India" drone ecosystem to monitor, regulate and onboard the huge population of illegal, Chinese drones operating in India," he added.