Experimental Flights

Goals

The class is currently designing, building and flying drones for various missions including commercial drone delivery, disaster relief for hurricanes, forest fire fighting and warehouse inventory management.
Commercial drone delivery – Design and implementation of a delivery network for small packages throughout Georgia Tech campus with an eye towards expanding the network to Metro Atlanta.
Disaster Relief – Building and flying drones that can assist with search and rescue and aid delivery after a hurricane. Impassable roads make this an ideal scenario for drone assistance.
Forest Fire Fighting – Developing drones that can detect forest fires using cameras and computer vision and map out location and growth of fire. Also researching use of drones as comm relays.
Inventory Management – Developing warehouse management software for use with indoor drones that can scan barcodes to automate inventory management. Drones must be able to avoid collisions with obstacles inside a warehouse environment.

Issues Involved or Addressed

Current tasks include conceptual design of new drones, selection of COTS hardware to build drones, CAD and 3D printing to build custom parts, drone assembly and flight testing, operation and modification of autopilot software, development of client-side and back-end software to facilitate missions, algorithms to optimize flight routes, documentation of hardware and software, and outreach to potential partners.