Imagine if you could get your groceries amid lockdown without venturing out or calling up delivery boys.

Well, that’s possible with the help of technology.

Four Class XII students of Motilal Nehru Public School — Yash Sinha, Raunak Mishra, Kunal Prasad and Ishan Kumar — have used their lockdown time in developing a drone that helps you fly in groceries without going out of your house.

These students had already procured the materials before the lockdown and have developed it now to help people maintain social distancing. The drone that can be controlled by a remote and through an application called QGround Control can travel up to a kilometre.

“We thought this was the best thing to keep social distance. I tested it a couple of times with 200gm of rice and biscuit packets and thought it can help others too. The drone can travel up to 3km if controlled by the app. There is a GPS tracker that sends live locations to the smartphone it’s connected to,” said Yash, a resident of Dimna and with whom the drone is now.

The drone was made at a budget of Rs 20,000, all contributed by my friends.

“The process is easy. You call up your nearby store, inform them about the things that you want and send the drone. The shopkeeper will have to place the carry bag on a holder and inform the user. This can ferry things easily without any kind of physical contact. Payments can be made online. The drone has a speed limit of 94kmph,” said Yash.

These friends, in touch over the phone, are now trying to increase the weight carrying capacity of the drone. Yash has decided to tie up with their grocery shop and give a short demo of the drone and help his neighbours, especially senior citizens.

“Apart from grocery, medicines are a big need now for the elderly. We’ve added a Google map feature too,” said Yash.