PRG-02 // Autonomous Aerial System

DRONA

In Development — T.R.I.N.E.T.R.A / 2026

Drones that operate without a pilot. DRONA is our research program into fully autonomous aerial systems — vehicles that plan their own routes, identify objects of interest using onboard AI, and conduct persistent surveillance across India's borders, coastline, and critical infrastructure without continuous human input.

In Development Collaborate on DRONA
What DRONA Is

Not a drone. An aerial intelligence system.

Consumer drones require a pilot. DRONA is researching what comes after that — a drone that receives a mission objective and executes it entirely on its own. It plans the flight path, navigates around obstacles, processes its camera and sensor feeds using onboard AI to identify what it is looking at, and transmits structured intelligence back to an operator rather than raw video.

The distinction matters. A human watching raw drone footage from a border patrol can only process one feed at a time, will fatigue, and will miss things. An AI-powered system that flags anomalies automatically — a vehicle moving at unusual speed, a person in a restricted zone, a structure that was not there before — changes the scale at which surveillance is possible.

We are in active development. The architecture is defined. The component research is underway. We do not yet have a flying prototype to show. We are being honest about that because the problem we are working on is real and the approach is sound, and that is what we are willing to stand behind.

System Architecture

Six components. One autonomous system.

DRONA's architecture is designed around six interconnected modules, each with a defined input, defined output, and defined interface with adjacent modules. The system is designed to operate with or without ground station connectivity.

MODULE 01
Sensor Module
EO/IR dual camera for day and night operation. RF detector for signals intelligence. Acoustic sensor array for engine and vehicle signature detection. All feeds raw data to Edge AI.
MODULE 02
Edge AI Processor
NVIDIA Jetson or custom FPGA running lightweight YOLO and custom classifier. Inference runs locally — no cloud dependency. Outputs detected objects with confidence scores and bounding boxes.
MODULE 03
Navigation Module
IMU, visual odometry, and magnetometer for GPS-denied flight. Pre-loaded terrain maps for visual matching. Outputs real-time position estimate to Mesh Comms and Payload modules.
MODULE 04
Mesh Comms Module
Encrypted peer-to-peer radio link between drones in a swarm. Shares target detections, position, and battery status. If one drone loses signal, others relay. No central server dependency.
MODULE 05
Payload Interface
Modular bay accepting mission-specific modules — camera gimbal, comms relay, or drop mechanism. Controller auto-detects payload type and adjusts flight parameters accordingly.
MODULE 06
Ground Control Station
Laptop or tablet app for mission planning, real-time telemetry display, and manual override. Connects to mesh network via ground radio. Optional — the system operates autonomously without it.
Current Status
Program StatusIn Development
ArchitectureDefined — 6 modules
Block DiagramComplete — available on request
Component ResearchUnderway
Flying PrototypeNot yet built
Onboard AIIn research phase
Swarm ProtocolDesigned — not yet implemented
Last Updated2026
The Problem

India has 15,000 kilometres of land border and 7,500 kilometres of coastline. Monitoring all of it is a scale problem that humans alone cannot solve.

Current surveillance relies heavily on human patrols and fixed camera installations. Patrols are expensive, dangerous, and leave large gaps. Fixed cameras cover only where they are pointed. Neither scales to the full extent of India's perimeter.

Autonomous aerial surveillance changes the equation. A drone that can patrol a 50-kilometre segment continuously, flag anything unusual, and alert a human operator only when something requires attention — rather than requiring a human to watch hours of routine footage — multiplies the effective reach of a surveillance force dramatically.

DRONA is our research program toward that capability. It is not there yet. The research is underway, the architecture is defined, and the component work is in progress. When we have a prototype, we will say so clearly and show what it can actually do.

Work on DRONA

Help us build the
flying prototype.

We need people with experience in autonomous flight, computer vision, embedded AI, and RF communications. No salary currently. Real research problems, real hardware when we get there.

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