Founder and Team Leader

I founded DUET Runway-71 on 15 October 2015 with one goal: to build and fly a drone at DUET, something no team at the university had attempted before. I started with no prior experience of drones, but brought together a team of ten students from the Departments of EEE, ME, CSE and Textile Engineering to design and build a quadcopter from scratch.

The project was entirely self-funded. Raising around Tk 35,000 for components from our own pockets was the biggest challenge we faced, but we overcame it, and within eight months the drone was nearly complete. Our first test flight on 13 June 2016 did not succeed, as the drone could not hold its balance. Rather than give up, we went back to work on the flight control and stability. On 11 August 2017, our quadcopter flew successfully: the first drone flight in DUET's history, and one of the proudest moments of my university life.

Building on that success, the team used the drone to capture the first-ever aerial video of the DUET campus, presented by the DUET Robotics Club with technical support from G-Robotics. The project helped spark wider interest in drones at DUET, and led to the founding of the DUET Aeronautical Society in 2018 to carry this work forward.

Team members: Md. Rasel Rana (Founder and Team Leader, EEE), Krishna Kanta Roy (EEE), Ananda Kumar Saha (ME), Amran Hossain (EEE), Imran Shaown (CSE), M. A. Muktadir Hussain (Textile Engineering), Dalim Kumar Roy (ME), Daniyal Islam (EEE), Mithun Chandra Das (EEE) and Md. Asaduzzaman Nur (EEE).

We are grateful to our advisers, Prof. Dr. Md. Raju Ahmed, Head of the Department of EEE, Prof. Dr. Md. Anwarul Abedin and Prof. Dr. Md. Kamruzzaman, for their guidance and encouragement throughout.