Now, Galgotias's soccer drone draws scrutiny after Chinese robodogs row

It seems the troubles for Galgotias University are not going to end anytime soon. After being thrown out of the India AI Impact Summit over the Chinese robodogs controversy, the Noida-based university has now attracted scrutiny over another product - a soccer drone ostensibly made in South Korea. This time, too, a Galgotias professor claimed that it was built from scratch by the university.

A video of communications professor Neha Singh, who was involved in the robodogs controversy as well, explaining the in-house "soccer drone" to a reporter has gone viral. Singh, who has unknowingly become the face of the whole row, said the "end-to-end engineering" of the drone was done at the campus.

"This is an interesting device. Its end-to-end engineering to its application, everything has been developed in the university," Singh said. She also claimed that Galgotias had developed India's first "drone soccer arena" on its campus.

"It has a simulation lab and an application arena... that's India's first soccer arena on campus. Here, the product is being developed with more enhanced features," she further said.

WHAT IS DRONE SOCCER?

The professor sounded convincing. She is, after all, a professor of communications. But it failed to pass muster with the social media army and tech enthusiasts on X, who didn't seem convinced.

Hawk-eyed social media users pointed out that the Galgotias product closely resembled the soccer drone developed by South Korea's Helsel Group. The product is available commercially.

India Today found that the product was similar to the Striker V3 ARF professional drone soccer set found on skyballdrone.com. It costs around $453 (Rs 40,800).

The remote-controlled, quadcopter drones are enclosed in protective spherical cages. This is used in a sport called drone soccer, an emerging and fast-paced indoor team game. As part of the game, a team of 3-5 players have to outmanoeuvre their opponents and navigate the drone through a suspended hoop (like basketball) to score points. Imagine basketball being played with drones.

On the website, Helsel claims that it was the first to pioneer the idea of drone soccer and came up with the product in 2015. The new sport was launched in South Korea in 2017.

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