For the question unasked.

What a research drone actually needs

Science payloads rarely fit off-the-shelf aircraft, and methods sections demand reproducibility. Four things decide the machine:

The sensor defines the aircraft

LiDAR, hyperspectral, air samplers, acoustic arrays: name the instrument and its weight, and DRONA designs the airframe, mounting, and power around carrying it properly.

Unusual configurations welcome

Hexacopters for heavy instruments, fixed-wing for transects, VTOL hybrids for range with vertical launch, ROVs for the water column. The same design flow covers all of them.

Physics that survive the field site

Thin air at altitude, cold that sags batteries, wind on exposed sites: the validator accounts for the conditions you describe, so the margin exists where the data is.

Reproducible builds

The design exports as a plain-text .vdx file plus a complete priced parts list and build guide. A collaborator or reviewer can rebuild the exact aircraft from the files, which is what a methods section wants.

From a sentence to the machine

You describe the job the way you would to an engineer:

"A hexacopter carrying a 1.2 kg LiDAR for canopy surveys at 2,500 m elevation."

DRONA answers with a complete design: airframe, motors, battery, flight controller, and the instrument payload, validated for physics, priced from live listings, and rendered in 3D.

Common questions

Can DRONA integrate our custom sensor?

Yes. Describe the instrument's weight, size, and mounting needs and the aircraft is designed around it, with lift and power margins validated at full equipment weight.

Does altitude change the design?

Yes: thinner air means less thrust from the same propulsion. Tell DRONA the field site's elevation and the physics validation sizes motors, props, and margins for the air you will actually fly in.

Can we publish the build?

That is the point of the exports: the .vdx design file, the bill of materials, and the build guide together make the aircraft reproducible by another lab.