Thanks to their drone-and-AI-driven approach to identifying unauthorized garbage dumps in India,
a student team from Manav Rachna University works to build cleaner, healthier, and smarter cities.
Many developing countries like India struggle with the unauthorized dumping of garbage — a practice which creates “garbage vulnerable points” (GVPs) that can pollute the environment, contaminate the water, and drive a range of other ecological and health hazards if not managed properly. According to a study published in the International Journal of Scientific Research in Science Engineering & Technology in February 2025, 90% of India’s municipal solid waste is improperly disposed of, posing a significant threat to the environment and human health, but current garbage management systems and other measures to curtail GVPs have proven largely ineffective. However, thanks to a student team in the Department of Computer Science & Technology at Manav Rachna University in Haryana, India and their EPICS in IEEE project entitled “Detection of Unidentified Garbage Vulnerable Points using Drones and AI,” their new drone-and-AI-driven system is poised to instantly identify GVPs and help enable faster clean-up by local authorities.
The drone platform in its initial stages of development
“Current monitoring systems largely rely on manual inspections and citizen complaints, which are reactive and inefficient,” shared Team Leader Satvik Asthana, a fourth-year student majoring in Btech Robotics and AI, and, along with his fellow teammates, a member of IEEE’s Manav Rachna University Student Branch. “Our project introduces an AI-powered drone surveillance system capable of detecting, classifying, geotagging, and estimating the volume of waste in real time.”
A Learning Experience
Partnering with local NGO Lakshay – A Society for Social and Environmental Development to better understand ground sanitation challenges as well as Delhi-based Yudru Technology for successful real-world deployment strategies, the four-student team acquired hands-on technical skills in drone operations, GPS data, sensor integration for obstacle detection, and machine-learning models to develop a scalable garbage-detection-and-waste-monitoring framework. “The project additionally helped us strengthen our critical thinking, problem-solving, project management, research, analytical, leadership, and presentation skills,” Asthana said, “and we also learned to work both individually and in teams made up of diverse participants.”
A team meeting marking the delivery of the components that started the drone assembly process
Since overcoming project challenges related to hardware integration, onboard processing constraints, and the lack of aerial datasets for garbage detection (which required the students to build a custom drone dataset and progressively retrain the model), the team is excited about their results so far.
“During a technical demonstration for Lakshay, our system successfully identified and geotagged garbage dumping locations within selected test areas and helped the NGO understand how drone-based monitoring can survey larger areas in a shorter duration, improve reporting accuracy, and provide visual evidence of illegal dumping sites,” Asthana said. “The pilot created awareness among community stakeholders about the applicability of drone and AI technologies in sanitation monitoring and also opened discussions on integrating such systems with municipal reporting frameworks in the future.”
“Our goal is to support municipalities and NGOs in building cleaner, healthier, and smarter cities and to make drone-assisted waste monitoring a standard component of smart urban infrastructure,” confirmed Asthana, who believes that their innovation could be transformational for India.
An Indelible Impact
Funded by generous EPICS in IEEE donors through the IEEE Foundation, the project had an indelible impact on its participants.
“The financial support and guidance we received from EPICS in IEEE was instrumental in turning our concept into a working system and providing us with both technical and strategic direction,” Asthana said. “Ultimately, EPICS in IEEE empowers young innovators to create solutions with meaningful community impact, and we strongly encourage other students to take advantage of this unique opportunity.”
“EPICS in IEEE is a transformative experience that moves engineering from the textbook to the ground level to help solve real-world challenges,” agreed Dr. Manpreet Kaur, SMIEEE, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Manav Rachna University and faculty mentor to the project. “In the case of our project, students received a beyond-the-lab opportunity to design a solution to combat the problem of garbage in India and gained a broad range of valuable technical and soft skills that will make them highly employable — all while being connected to the vast IEEE professional network, which provides visibility and a platform to showcase social innovation.”
Collaboration and discussion between faculty, students, NGO, industry partner, and project mentor
Above all, Dr. Kaur concluded, “EPICS in IEEE projects help students develop the community and environmental awareness that enables them to become socially responsible citizens.”
For more information on EPICS in IEEE or the opportunity to participate in service-learning projects, visit https://epics.ieee.org/.
“EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) in IEEE” is an initiative which provides opportunities for students to work proactively with both engineering professionals, technological innovation, and local organizations/partners to develop solutions that address global community challenges.
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