NIDAR 2.0 (Space & Defence Sectors)
NIDAR 2.0 (Space & Defence Sectors)
Why In News:
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), along with the Drone Federation India (DFI), launched NIDAR 2.0 (National Innovation Challenge for Drone Application and Research) on 13 July 2026 at Electronics Niketan, New Delhi, under the SwaYaan initiative for the 2026-27 cycle.
What is NIDAR 2.0?
NIDAR is India’s largest national drone innovation initiative that motivates students and researchers from academia to build collaborative autonomous drones across 2 critical domains: Disaster Management and Precision Agriculture.
This is the second edition after the inaugural NIDAR in March 2025, which drew 3,448 students from 22 States and Union Territories and 109 cities.
There are two competition tracks:
Drone Innovation: Focuses on building smart drones for tasks like disaster rescue, delivering medical supplies, and navigation without GPS indoors.
Drone Components: Focuses on developing key drone parts in India, such as a flight controller and autopilot system using the VEGA processor.
The challenge is held under SwaYaan, a MeitY umbrella programme for drone related skilling and innovation.
The VEGA Processor and India's Semiconductor Push
VEGA is a family of indigenous microprocessors designed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under MeitY's Microprocessor Development Programme.
It is built on the open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture, which is royalty free, reducing dependence on licensed foreign chip architectures such as ARM or x86.
VEGA has been developed under the Digital India RISC-V (DIR-V) programme, aimed at building a self reliant semiconductor design ecosystem.
The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), set up in 2021 under MeitY with an outlay of about Rs 76,000 crore, is the umbrella scheme supporting semiconductor and display fabrication in India.
Drone Policy Architecture in India
The Drone Rules, 2021 liberalised drone operations, reducing the number of approvals required compared to the earlier Unmanned Aircraft System Rules.
The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for drones and drone components (2021) supports domestic manufacturing.
The Digital Sky Platform, operated by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), is India's online drone airspace management and registration portal.
The Drone Federation India (DFI) is the apex industry body representing drone manufacturers, developers and operators in India.