MeitY and the Drone Federation India launched NIDAR 2.0, a challenge for students to build autonomous drones and controllers using the indigenous VEGA processor. It offers a Rs 65 lakh prize pool and aims to foster a self-reliant drone industry.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in collaboration with the Drone Federation India (DFI), on Monday launched the second edition of the National Innovation Challenge for Drone Application and Research (NIDAR 2.0), challenging students to build autonomous drones and indigenous flight controllers powered by India's homegrown VEGA processor.
Building a Self-Reliant Drone Industry
According to a MeitY release, NIDAR 2.0 offers a prize pool of more than Rs 65 lakh, along with startup incubation, cloud computing credits, software support and corporate internships for participating student teams.
Launching the challenge, MeitY Secretary S Krishnan said, "NIDAR 2.0 takes our students from just flying drones to building the drone's brain. When the drone's brain runs on India's own VEGA processor, we are not just training engineers. We are laying the foundation of a self-reliant drone industry."
He added that "VEGA is developed under the Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) programme, a MeitY-driven initiative to reduce the country's dependence on foreign chip designs and their licensing costs."
Challenge Focus and Innovation Tracks
According to the ministry, the latest edition shifts the focus from conventional drone platforms to autonomous systems, indigenous avionics and core drone components.
Under the Drone Innovation track, student teams will build autonomous swarm drones capable of locating survivors and delivering medical supplies in disaster-hit areas without external communication networks, besides developing GPS-denied drones for indoor industrial inspections. The Component Innovation track requires teams to design an indigenous flight controller and autopilot built around the VEGA processor using indigenous electronic components.
MeitY said the top 100 teams selected after technical evaluation will each receive two VEGA processor kits for development, testing and integration.
The Indigenous VEGA Processor
The ministry said the VEGA processor family has been designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under MeitY's Microprocessor Development Programme and is based on the open-standard RISC-V architecture.
According to the release, winning teams will also receive incubation support, corporate internships and cloud credits to help commercialise their innovations.
Aligning with National Missions
"Civilian and defence drones share much of the same core technology. The ideas emerging from NIDAR can therefore strengthen both civilian and defence applications, in line with the goals of Atmanirbhar Bharat and Viksit Bharat @2047," the ministry said.
Success of the First Edition
The first edition of NIDAR, launched in March 2025, attracted 3,448 students from 22 states, four Union Territories and 109 cities. Of the 93 teams that reached the grand finale, 24 teams won prizes worth a total of Rs 40 lakh, according to the MeitY release. (ANI)
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