Lucknow, March 12 : The Indian Institute of Information Technology-Lucknow (IIIT-L) has built a 'desi drone' which is equally efficient, but five times cheaper than the ones available in the market. It has been done with an innovative tweak in drone technology using a mobile phone. A panel of experts at the incubation centre of IIT-Patna has approved the innovation and released grants for further development of the indigenous drone. The IIIT-L team will patent this innovation soon. The new drone has been developed after research for around six months by Assistant Professor Vishal Krishna Singh and his two students. It can be used by farmers and agriculture experts for monitoring their crops and agricultural terrain mapping. Besides, officials can use it to assess drought and flood situations. Even individuals can utilise it for aerial photography. The team was given the responsibility to develop in 12 months an economical drone by the department of science and technology (DST) under its scheme NIDHI-PRAYAS at the incubation centre of IIT Patna. National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovations (NIDHI) is an umbrella programme conceived and developed by the DST for Promoting and Accelerating Young and Aspiring innovators & Startups. Lead innovator Vishal Krishna Singh who also heads the wireless communications and analytics research lab at IIIT, said, "One of the most expensive components of a part is the camera. Hence, instead of using the regular camera, we made an innovation that enabled the drone to take photographs through a mobile phone camera. This enabled us to bring down the cost." "The cost of a drone at present is around Rs 8,000, which can be brought down to Rs 3,000 in case of mass production. The drones of the same efficiency and quality currently are priced above Rs 40,000," he added. Explaining further about the innovation, Singh said, "We have made a port on the drone's quadcopter where one can plug in his or her mobile phone. The drone sensors while flying then uses the camera of the mobile phone to take photographs and transmit them to the laptop through an android application for aerial monitoring. The app for this purpose has also been developed by us." /IANS