The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) which had developed an airboat Jaldost MkI has now come up with an upgraded version of the airboat.
The airboat which uses air propulsion and thrust vectoring technology to travel in shallow and flood waters is capable of weed cutting and scooping the floating waste products.
According to NAL, the upgraded version, Jaldost MkII is an aerospace technology based spin off societal product for cleaning water bodies.
The key features of Jaldost MkII includes a mechanised system to pick up the floating trash as well as rooted aquatic weeds and excess vegetation. Besides, it is capable of moving at a lower depth even in shallow waters.
Its specifications include an onboard trash storage capacity by weight upto four tonnes with a cutting depth upto three feet below water.
It can clean one acre in eight hours depending on the type of vegetation consuming five litters of diesel per hour.
The Jaldost MkI was launched in 2019 at Ulsoor Lake and had attracted the attention of a few potential customers who felt the need for having higher capacity and automatic cutting and storing of weeds. In order to meet the requirements an advanced version of Jaldost MkI was considered.
An NAL source said that the Jaldost MkII has been developed and would be launched soon.
NAL has highlighted that it has good export potential to neighbouring and south asian countries.
Safe technology
Jaldost is a safe technology as the propulsion system is in the air. “Because the propulsion system is in the air, there is no risk of entanglement with objects submerged under water and hence not easily identifiable. This feature also makes it ideal for life saving and rescue operations in flood disaster situations,” NAL had said while launching Jaldost MkI.