Autonomous Drone Engineer Course

Do you know how power lines are checked? They send a customized helicopter with a highly trained crew to take photos. It’s slow, expensive and dangerous. The next step is of course to use a remotely controlled drone to take the pictures. It’s still slow and not scalable to the full size of the power line network.

That’s why we need autonomous drones, able to fly but also avoid collisions and analyze the situation as they go. Autonomous Drone Engineers will need to master a wide range of skills, from computer vision basics, embedded development and drone hardware design.

Requirements

Linux programming in Python or C/C++. Basic Linux sysadmin.

Intel Aero Ready-To-Fly Drone

Competences

After this training, the student will be able to: • analyze drone usage models, business models and market - relevant for all persons involved in drone projects • understand autonomous drone hardware and software architecture - relevant for drone developers and project managers • basic safe flight, drone maintenance skills, work with regulation - relevant for drone operator and drone developers • develop autonomous drones software for simple use cases - ex: following and adapting a mission outdoor • develop autonomous drones software for advanced use cases - ex: flying indoor or flights with strong flight-payload interactions

Links:

Youtube Playlist

Slides

Slides PDFs

Reference: Intel Aero github

Table of contents, released and planned:

A. Introduction

• Intel Aero in 5mn.
• Autonomous Drone Usage Models.
• Drones in society (soon)

B. Architecture

• Introduction.
• Hardware architecture.
• 3D and visual sensors.
• Software Architecture.

C.Lab setup

• Flashing and lab setup.

D. Drone software development

• Hello world flight controller.
• Hello world networked drone.
• Docker containers.
• ROS (very soon)
• Access cameras and stream (very soon)

E. Advanced drone software development

• Collision avoidance (soon)
• VISP (soon)
• SLAM (soon)
• Movidius Computer Vision (soon)
• Big Data in Real Time (soon)
• Gazebo simulator (soon)

F. Server side software development

• Cloud Sync (soon)
• SAP integration (soon)
• Mapping and GeoData (soon)
• 3D reconstruction (soon)
• Big Data (soon)

G. Productizing

• VPNs (very soon)
• LTE Modem (soon)
• 3D printing accessories (very soon)

H. Entrepreneurship

• Ecosystem (soon)
• Ideation (soon)
• Promotion (soon)