Drone in a box is a drone kept in a box on a site that launches, lands back and charges by itself, run remotely by software with no one present. The box has a lid that opens, a landing pad and a charger. It is also called a drone dock.
The idea is that no person has to go to the site. A person at a distant office presses a button, or the software starts a flight on a timetable. The lid opens, the drone takes off, flies its route and lands in the box. The box closes, and the drone charges for the next flight. All of it is run from a ground control station, which can control many boxes at different sites at once. The box also has a weather sensor. If the wind or rain is too strong, the software does not launch the drone.
Say a mining company has a quarry near Udaipur and wants to measure the stockpile every day. Earlier, a surveyor drove 3 hours to fly a drone. Now a box at the quarry flies the route at 7 a.m. each day, in about 20 minutes. The pictures reach the office before the surveyor's morning tea. The result is used for drone surveying.
The same box is used for robotic inspection of solar farms, substations and pipelines. Mining companies, power utilities and security firms are the usual buyers, because they have sites that are far away and need frequent checks. The box needs autonomy at the level of a planned route that the drone follows alone. Boxes are also used to give security teams a view of a site at night. The drone flying from it is an ordinary drone. In India, flights beyond the operator's sight are not yet routine. The government plans to start certifying such flights by the end of 2026.