Polytechnic Students Fly Plane With Cellphone

A research team of Mechanical Engineering Polytechnic College in Dattewal village of Moga district in Punjab has flown a model of a plane with the help of a mobile phone.

The team, after months of labor, succeeded in flying a scaled-down version of an airplane with the help of a mobile phone that worked as a remote control. The mobile phone cum remote control directed the three-foot long plane to take off and fly. The airplane landed successfully, accomplishing the mission of the team.

"We designed the plane and then with the help of a mobile phone flew it for few minutes," said team leader Gurwinder Singh. Other members of the team included Gulab Singh, Simarpal Singh and Navdeep Singh, all students of the institute.

Explaining the details, Gurwinder Singh said that a programmable electronic circuit was built into the model aircraft and signals to this circuit were sent by the mobile phone. "Though the test flight was a success, we need to do some more research. We're working on perfecting the art of speed, height and direction of the plane," he added.

The sport of flying scaled-down version of airplanes, or aeromodels, is widely popular in western countries, but is only starting to gain momentum in India. Unmanned planes are extremely useful during wars, where defense services can get information of enemy build-ups along the border. A camera attached to these planes can be used to scan areas during disasters.

Gurwinder Singh and his team had last year used a mobile phone to start a tubewell motor. The team's future experiments include the development of an advanced earthquake alert system.