UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

A SCADA system gathers readings from sensors and controllers spread over a plant, a grid or a water network, shows them on screens in a control room, records them, and lets an operator send commands back, which is why it is described as supervisory control together with data acquisition.

A PLC is a rugged industrial computer that reads the state of switches and sensors as inputs, runs a stored programme of logic, and switches motors, valves and lamps as outputs, so that a machine or a whole line runs by itself.

Vyommitra has a head, a face, arms and a torso but no legs, which is why it is called half humanoid, and it has been built to ride an uncrewed flight of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, operate switches, watch the panels and report conditions as a crew member would.

Lakshya was developed by the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the DRDO to be flown as a target so that gun crews and missile units can practise against a realistic moving aircraft, and it is recovered by parachute.

A UAV is an aircraft with no pilot on board, flown either by a remote pilot or by its own programme, and when it is counted together with its ground control station and the radio link between them the whole is called an unmanned aircraft system.

Digital Sky is the online platform of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on which a drone is registered and given its unique identification number, on which the airspace map with its green, yellow and red zones is published, and through which flight permissions are sought.

The rules class drones by all up weight, which includes the battery and the payload, and the nano class is the smallest, up to 250 grams, which is why the lightest toy and camera drones fall in it and are treated most lightly by the law.

Asimov set out the three laws in his science fiction, by which a robot may not harm a human being, must obey the orders given by human beings except where that conflicts with the first law, and must protect itself except where that conflicts with the first two laws; he…

The Czech writer Karel Capek used the word in his play R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots, written in 1920, taking it from the Czech word robota, which means forced labour.

Automation is the technology in which mechanical parts, electronics and computer based control are put together so that a process is controlled and operated with little human help, which is exactly the description in the question.

It is the broad low break in the Western Ghats, about thirty kilometres wide, through which road and rail run between Kerala and Tamil Nadu and through which the summer winds blow inland, which is why the rainfall pattern on either side of it differs.

The great hornbill, a large forest bird of the Western Ghats with a heavy yellow bill and a casque above it, is the state bird of Kerala, and the state animal is the Indian elephant, the state flower the golden shower called kanikonna and the state tree the coconut palm.

Kerala grows most of the natural rubber produced in India, with the Kottayam region at its centre, and the Rubber Board of India works from Kottayam.

Vasco da Gama reached Kappad on the Malabar coast in 1498, having sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and was received by the Zamorin, the ruler of Calicut; this was the first sea route opened from Europe to India.

The Kerala High Court sits at Ernakulam and its jurisdiction covers both the state of Kerala and the union territory of Lakshadweep, which has no high court of its own.

Onam falls in the Malayalam month of Chingam, is kept over ten days with the chief day called Thiruvonam, and marks the harvest along with the remembered visit of the king Mahabali, with flower carpets, the sadya meal, boat races and the Pulikali dance.

Silent Valley lies in the Palakkad district on the Kunthipuzha river, a tributary of the Bharathappuzha, and the dam proposed on that river was given up after one of the best known conservation campaigns in India, after which the valley was made a national park.

Anamudi, about 2,695 metres high, stands in Eravikulam National Park in the Idukki district of Kerala, and the same park holds the largest surviving population of the Nilgiri tahr, the mountain goat of the Western Ghats.

Vembanad is the greatest of the Kerala backwaters, a brackish lagoon that runs behind the coast for a long stretch and is crossed at Alappuzha, the town called the Venice of the East, where the Nehru Trophy Boat Race is rowed on its Punnamada part.

The Periyar rises in the Western Ghats and flows west to the Arabian Sea, and it carries both the Idukki arch dam and the Mullaperiyar dam, the second of which is worked by Tamil Nadu under an old lease.