Stuck in a Room, Bound for the Skies: How Our SUAS Team Was Born

It all began in the winter vacation of December 2023, under unexpected circumstances. A cyclone alert in Chennai had confined us to our hostel rooms — no outings, no classes, and plenty of boredom. But that moment of stillness gave rise to something extraordinary.

Tired of routine coursework and uninspired by our classroom curriculum, the four of us sat around brainstorming what we really wanted to do. We were still figuring out our interests, and after multiple rejections from existing competition teams in the institute, we were driven by a single thought: if no team would take us in, we would build one ourselves.

That’s when we stumbled upon the SUAS (Student Unmanned Aerial Systems) competition — a prestigious international challenge that perfectly aligned with our passion for drones, autonomy, and hands-on engineering. What started as four students stuck in a room quickly turned into a serious ambition.

We approached CFI (Centre for Innovation) with our idea. While they didn’t reject it, we were told that to officially be part of a CFI competition team, we needed to have participated in a competition at least once — a catch-22. They suggested we work under the Aero Club as a project, but we envisioned something more: not a side project, but a fully functional and autonomous aerial team.

So we took a different route — we began reaching out to professors.

Though many appreciated our proposal and enthusiasm, they were unfortunately over-committed and couldn’t onboard us formally. Still, they offered moral support and mentorship. Then we met Prof. Satadal Ghosh. In a single meeting, he saw the potential in us and agreed to become our Faculty Advisor.

From that moment on, everything started falling into place.

He arranged starting funds, allocated workspace in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control lab at NAC-2 (New Academic Complex), and gave us the institutional foundation we needed. Under his guidance — and with support from his project associates — we transformed from four passionate students to a structured team.

We soon doubled in size, bringing on four more classmates who shared the same hunger to learn and build something impactful. Around this time, we were also fortunate to connect with Rishabh, an MSc student at IITM who had previously competed in SUAS 2016 during his B.Tech and had even served as a volunteer judge for the competition. He agreed to mentor us as our Student Advisor — a turning point for the entire team.