Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, are a controversial subject due to their military and surveillance applications. However, researchers and students at N.C. State are trying to teach others about the countless other functions these devices have through a competition that they hope will become an annual occurrence.
Students, who spent months programming the drones, participated in the inaugural contest on Centennial Campus Saturday to see which one could navigate a course of virtual buildings entirely on its own.
Mihail Sichitiu, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, served as a judge for the contest and had a primary role in planning the event.
The contest’s purpose was to teach students—some of whom already had experience programming computers, cell phones and other devices— how to program drones, according to Sichitiu.
“Programming a drone is quite different than programming a computer, so we wanted to teach them what it takes to do that and to think in these new programming terms,” Sichitiu said.
Sichitiu said the researchers who organized the competition, including professor of computer science, Rudra Dutta, also learned how to teach students about this new concept without overwhelming them.
“It was very interesting to find out how we can expose this functionality to students yet make it easy enough for them to understand in a couple of weeks or months,” Sichitiu said.
Sichitiu said it’s important to teach students about drones because there will undoubtedly be more of them in the future.
“We want them to get familiar with this new technology because there are going to be a more drones in the future, and we want to be on the forefront of drone technology,” Sichitiu said. “If we can teach them and have some fun along the way, that’s just a bonus. Everyone had a blast.”
The competition mainly involved students in the departments of computer science, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and electrical engineering, but Sichitiu said he wants to involve more students in future competitions.
The contest was part of a broader effort by Sichitiu and his colleagues to encourage others to start similar events.
“We want to help others by smoothing the learning curve, which is currently pretty steep,” Sichitiu said. “We want to allow others to replicate our work or to follow in our footsteps. Perhaps other teams won’t have to spend nine months like we did, and they can come up to speed in two to three months for another event. That would therefore help popularize or make the technology more accessible to other people.”
Graduate students in Splash Brothers and Team YOLO emerged victorious in the event.
Though the military’s application of drones has drawn criticism, Sichitiu said that drones, much like other technologies developed by the military, will serve as a launchpad for “countless” civilian uses.
“I have no doubts there are going to be countless civilian applications,” Sichitiu said. “In particular, we’re looking at related to mobile sensing.”
These drones could be used for atmospheric sensing to sense airborne contaminates, according to Sichitiu.
Sichitiu said about 30 drones could be assigned to high-rise buildings in a particular area sensing for these contaminates. If one of them senses a problem, the other drones could be summoned to that area to determine the source.
Sichitiu also said drones are being used for precision agriculture, where low-flying drones could assess the crop’s healthiness.
“I think drones are unparalleled in the research world today and have more capabilities than anything else at this point,” Sichitiu said. “There seems to be a lot of people that agree with that.”