Requesting Technical Sponsorship Support for Student Funded Team in India

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Orin Nano
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Hi everyone,

I hope you’re all doing great! I’m writing on behalf of Team SDMCET AeroClub, a group of passionate undergraduates from SDMCET,Dharwad, where we focus on autonomous drones, aeronautics and robotics. Our team’s mission is to design and build innovative aerial systems that solve real-world problems using AI and advanced flight technologies.

Since we started, we’ve participated in national competitions and built high-performance drone systems from scratch.

A few of our recent accomplishments include:

  • Top performing (AIR 6 )team at ADDC 2025 (Autonomous Drone Design Challenge) – Successfully built and demonstrated a rotary-wing autonomous drone capable of navigation, qr detection and precise payload delivery.

  • Designed and fabricated a custom 500mm wheelbase drone frame integrated with Pixhawk and Here4 RTK GPS for centimeter-level navigation.

Currently, we are working on a Disaster Management Autonomous Drone project with the following capabilities:

  • Human detection in disaster-affected areas using AI-based computer vision models.

  • GPS coordinate transmission of detected individuals to the Ground Control Station for rescue teams.

  • Autonomous navigation with AI-assisted obstacle avoidance to operate in complex, debris-filled environments.

To bring this project to life, we require high-performance onboard computing for real-time AI inference. The NVIDIA Jetson Orin Developer Kit is the perfect solution for this, as it offers the processing power needed for computer vision and decision-making during flight.

As a student-funded club, we face challenges in acquiring such advanced hardware. We would be incredibly grateful if NVIDIA could support us with a Jetson board sponsorship or any form of discount/technical assistance. Your support would directly contribute to:

  • Enabling life-saving disaster management capabilities in our drone.

We’d be happy to share more about our team, past projects, technical details, and how we plan to integrate the Jetson board. We can also provide progress updates and final results once the project is completed.

Thanks a lot for your time and consideration — we look forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,
Rudragouda Tadahal
Team Captain, Team SDMCET AeroClub
SDMCET, India
📧 rudragouda956@gmail.com

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Let me forward your request to internal team to see if able to conact with you.
In the meantime, you may also check Academic Grant Program for Researchers | NVIDIA, that’s another way to grant the support. Thanks

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Thank you