Small aircraft, hands-on learning
Tiny Drones explores the technology inside a drone, from microcontrollers and sensors to the algorithms that keep it in the air. The goal is to understand a flight controller from the ground up and use that knowledge to develop new experiments.
Start with a platform. Make it your own.
The approach starts with an affordable kit and open-source Crazyflie flight-controller software. From there, the possibilities include designing a custom PCB, adding sensors and developing modules for a shared ADDI drone platform.
Ideas in the project brief include infrared tracking, optical flow and coordinated flight. These are directions to explore as the hardware and software develop.
Why small drones?
Small platforms make it easier to experiment, keep hardware costs manageable and develop compact systems. Work spans electronics, control theory, embedded programming and simulation.
Ways to get involved
Electrical systems, hardware
PCB design
Designing the PCB of the Drone. You are welcome to experiment and build new modules such as ESCs for a brushless drone.
Apply for this areaElectrical engineering or automation engineering
Controller design
Play with interesting approaches to design the controlling algorithms of the drone.
Apply for this areaComputer engineering
Microcontroller programming
Write low-level code to power the drone. You can for example develop drivers and interfaces to interact with the real world.
Apply for this areaSimulation engineering
Simulation development
Set up an automated simulation environment to rapidly test and simulate software for the world.
Apply for this areaWhatever you can imagine
Experimental development
Think of experiments you want to design. The only limit is your imagination (and sometimes budget). You always wanted to build a tracking Radar? Try to do it!
Apply for this area