Late last month, C.J Varghese, a Kerala based engineer & innovator, received a patent (#515036) from Indian Patent Office for his pioneering invention of hand-portable Kamikaze drone.
Kamikaze drones, also known as loitering munitions or suicide drones, are weapons that can patrol over a battlefield before attacking a target.
The patent granted to Varghese is third patent by Indian Patent Office to him, out of six applications he has filed to date.
The Hand Portable Track and Kill Suicide Drone, designed by Varghese, to be operated by the army or special ops during war or in the chance of a terrorist attack. The main aim of this is to reduce casualties and allow the force to advance quickly in a face to face combat situation where the enemy is just few metres in front of the force. The enemy can be tracked and the user can decide whether to act or not.
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Patent Granted
— C.J.Varghese (@CjVarghese96) February 26, 2024
A pioneering hand-portable Kamikaze drone, resembling a capsule, or a smart grenade, featuring distinctive foldable and deployable mechanisms, along with an innovative engagement strategy.
3rd patent pic.twitter.com/Or2i99Rxjq
Unlike other suicide drones and surveillance drones available in the market, its design is made simple and light so as to be operated with comfort and can be held in the palm of a soldier, which allows him to throw it like a grenade. Thus, it can also be called as a Smart Grenade. But this drone comes with less specs, short life time of about 5 to 10 minutes and a maximum range of about 400 to 700 meters within a limited altitude of 30 to 40 metres from the ground.
Varghese's Kamikaze drone resembles a capsule, or a smart grenade, featuring distinctive foldable and deployable mechanisms, along with an innovative engagement strategy.
The drone is operable by using small tablets that can be fixed on the arms and such drone's controls being partially automated and standard controls will only pop up if needed or on request.
The drone invented has throw mode or normal lift mode that can be selected before deployment by flicking a switch on the drone, wherein the control tablet will have the live feed from the drone; the drones can be taken out from its tube casings and hooked to the exterior part of the user"s backpack and a user in a 6-team unit can carry about three of these drones with the user.
The weight of the drone with warhead is about 1200g. The condition for lifting i.e. fly of Quadcopter is that the ratio of total thrust of the body to the total weight of the body should be minimum 1.5.
Total Thrust/ Total weight = X/1200 = 1.5 So total thrust X = 1.8 Kg. Thus, the minimum required thrust per motor is equal to 450g.
The foldable arm holds the motor and the propeller unit. Upon the deployment of the drone, on releasing the pin the arm is unfolded and for doing this it uses elastic cables or similar spring mechanisms.
The drone, claims Varghese in one of the patent documents, can be taken out from its tube casings and hooked to the exterior part of the soldier's backpack by giving such a mechanism on the drone, so that he can use them quickly and easily while advancing towards an enemy territory.
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