Inventing wizard, Mihir Garimella has taken his curiosity of how the world works and utilized it to power his creative mind to save lives. The 18-year old Pittsburgh native has explored the infinite potential of drones. A very successful inventor for his age, science fair champion, and technology junkie, Garimella had a revelation moment that led to an idea.
Coming home from vacation, Mihir took notice of fruit flies all over some bananas they had sitting on the kitchen counter. After many failed attempts to swat them, he reflected on the irritating, but amazing reaction time of the fruit flies. A creature so small with terrible vision clarity, has one of the fastest vision processing speeds of any creature. Mihir took this discovery and applied it to fast response search and rescue drones.
Now a student at Stanford University in California, he hopes to upgrade his previous idea he called “Firefly” and apply it to rapid response teams. His goal was to create a low-cost, but reliable drone, with adaptable “plug-ins” for separate tasks. And he has delivered. One example of his adaption is applying thermal reading to a drone to process heat signatures given off by distressed humans in need of rescue. Another situation such as a nuclear leak, a specialized drone with radiation detection can identify affected areas for cleanup.
The possibilities are endless. And with the ambition of Mihir, the sky is the limit. Mihir would like to keep his drone under the $1000 range for affordability. After future testing and adaptions, he hopes to have products available in one to two years.
The world is changing, technology is growing; sometimes in a dark way. Mihir understands the dangers of drones and remains optimistic to show the world the positive potential for drones to save lives around the world.
This idea grew from an observation that most people would not have made, and he used that knowledge to create something amazing! I have flown a drone and just bought my first drone for creating promotions for my business. Faster processing can be a problem with drones, and any drone that is on the less expensive side usually starts to get glitches without going too far. I think this is a need that people already have, and once developed more people will realize they need it.