chennai the police usually get scores of complaints of chains snatched and pockets picked during the panguni festival of the kapaleeshwarar temple in mylapore which draws huge crowds this year just three cases of theft and one robbery were reportedreason the police had deployed drones with face recognition software frs which helped them spot suspects before the cause trouble frs is a valuable asset cops can monitor suspects and nab them instantly said city police commissioner shankar jiwalthe drone wing of the chennai police is getting cameras with frs effective from a height of 30 to 50 feet besides infrared and thermal scanning cameras to spot people swept out to sea even in the darkthe state government has sanctioned rs 36 crore to create the drone unit which will be the polices eyes in the sky as a part of the makeinindia programme we have asked a few startups to build a dozen indigenous drones as per our specifi cations said commissioner jiwalchennai city south joint commissioner of police narenthiran nayar who is coordinating with the technical experts said the drones will be ready in another two months and a team of police personnel is getting trained to fly themthe city police are building three types of drones the fi rst weighs 2 kg with a fl ying range of 5 km these will mostly will be used for surveillance along the adyar and cooum riverbeds parks and some remote places in the city the second type is a longrange drone which can fly for up to 15 km the third is a delivery drone with a range of 2km that can carry at least 10 kg of goods especially buoys floats and life jackets these drones will also have night vision cameras and thermal scanners and will be used to fly out buoys floats and life jackets to people in trouble at sea close to the coasthow will the drone unit handle the challenge of setting up control rooms across the city madras institute of technology mit professor k senthil kumar who is one of the technical advisers for the drone project said we are planning to set up offi ce in shipping containers at marina beach t nagar and other strategic locations each container will have computers and a dedicated team monitoring the feed from the drones the containers will have temporary drone pad on their rooftops the containers will have a power generator and an uninterrupted internet connectionthese containers can be shifted from one place to the other whenever there are vvip movements to be monitored this would reduce the response time in case of emergencies too said professor senthil kumar