NIDAR 2.0 launched under SwaYaan initiative

The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), in collaboration with the Drone Federation India (DFI), has launched the second edition of the National Innovation Challenge for Drone Application and Research (NIDAR 2.0: 2026–27) under the SwaYaan initiative.

• NIDAR 2.0 aims to promote innovation, indigenous technology development, and research in India’s rapidly growing drone ecosystem.
• The first edition (NIDAR 2025–26), launched in March 2025, attracted:
  • 3,448 students
  • From 22 States and 4 Union Territories
  • Representing 109 cities
• Participants developed autonomous drone solutions for applications such as:
  • Disaster Management
  • Precision Agriculture

Key Features of NIDAR 2.0

• The second edition shifts the focus from conventional drone platforms to:
  • Autonomous drone systems
  • Indigenous avionics
  • Core drone technologies and components
• The competition is organised under two tracks:
  • Track 1: Development of advanced autonomous drone applications.
  • Track 2 (Component Innovation): Design and development of an indigenous flight controller and autopilot based on the VEGA processor using indigenous electronic components.

About the VEGA Processor

• VEGA is a family of indigenously developed microprocessors designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under MeitY’s Microprocessor Development Programme.
• It is based on the RISC-V (Reduced Instruction Set Computer–Five) architecture, an open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) that enables the development of open, customisable processors.

About the SwaYaan Initiative

• The SwaYaan initiative was approved by MeitY in July 2022 with an outlay of approximately ₹89.87 crore for a period of five years.
• The initiative aims to build a skilled workforce for India’s drone industry through education, research, innovation, and industry collaboration.
• It is implemented through a Hub-and-Spoke model involving 30 premier institutions, including:

Source: PIB

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