VADODARA: A young aeronautical engineer from Vadodara is making her presence felt in the US, and that too in otherwise
male-dominated field of unmanned aircraft system (
UAS), popularly called the drones.
Sonal Baid, 28, who had finished her Bachelors in Engineering from
SVIT, Vasad, has become the first Indian to feature in the 2018 list of ‘Women to Watch in UAS’ awards. Sonal, who handles product development for a US-based startup Kittyhawk, bagged the award on September 6 for her focus on safety, compliance and maintenance along with a vision for how
unmanned aerial vehicle operations need to be managed at scale.
“The unmanned vehicles industry has an immense potential and I see myself being a part of the revolution this technology is bringing to the world. By being part of the teams developing innovative products, I can help to shape this new and upcoming industry,” said Sonal, who completed her master of technology management program from University of California’s Santa Barbara campus.
Although she had initially joined as an intern with Kittyhawk after finishing her graduation in June 2017, Sonal soon took up the leading role in product development and strategic operations.
“The drone industry is expected to become US$ 120 billion size by 2020. In the last two years, there is a significant jump is usage of drones in almost every sector. They are multiple industries that use the UAS during emergencies, natural calamities, in agriculture sector and are often being used by the police and the fire departments,” she said.
“But not many known that drones are considered as aircrafts and they belong to the national airspace. Since almost everybody and anybody is using drones, the software that we have developed helps them understand how should they should use drones, what are the weather conditions they should look for and what kind of special permissions, if any, are required for using drones,” she said.
She recollected how when she was a child, her father – Sanjay – would take her to the airport every Sunday just to watch airplanes take off and land.
“I was always super excited about machines, especially the flying machines,” said Sonal.
