CHENNAI: At 1pm on Wednesday, as a National Disaster Response Force mountaineer rappelled down the 1,000-foot tall Kurumbachi hill to rescue injured trekker R Babu, it was drones from Chennai that helped him navigate the precipitous slopes.
Around 48 hours earlier, while on a hike with friends, Babu had fallen into a crevice on the side of the hill in Malampuzha, near Palakkad district in Kerala. The friends tried to pull him up with sticks, but failed and sought help from the police, who then roped in the army.
"We got a call from the army at 11pm on Tuesday," says Agnishwar Jayaprakash, Founder & CEO, Garuda Aerospace, who despatched his team of two drones and two pilots by car to Palakkad, who reached the spot by 6am.
The original plan, says Jayaprakash, was to send in a stringing drone equipped with a 2.5mm Platina and nylon steel cable and pass a chord to Babu to be fastened on a harness so he could be lifted using a crane. "But this did not work as Babu, having had no food and water for 48 hours, was too weak and disoriented to reach out for the chord," he says.
The plan was changed, ropes were dropped down the side of the hill and an NDRF personnel made his way towards Babu. "The drones were used to help the team navigate because the slope was so steep - almost vertical at places - that it was impossible to judge the exact location of the hiker from the top of the mountain. With the live feed from the drones, the army would shift the position of the rope as well as direct the mountaineer," says Mohammed Basher, co-pilot of the drone.
"As the terrain was rugged a helicopter couldn't get the job done," says Jayaprakash. The drone also supplied water to the rescue team.