Gain hands-on experience with camera drones and learn the theoretical background.

Course description

The course will feature lectures and a project part. Lectures will cover the topics from quadrotor control to computer vision. The project part consists of carrying out a robotics project with drones in our droneSpace. The project work contains a programming task using ROS (robot operation system) and C++. At the end of the course students have to take a  questionnaire about the lectures.

Lecture topics

  • Quadrotor Basics
  • Control and Sensors
  • 3D Data Generation
  • Visual Odometry
  • Flight Planning for 3D Modeling
  • Regulations for Camera Drones
  • ROS Tutorial

Practical part

The practical part is organized as a student competition. The participating students will form teams and compete with each other in a Search and Rescue challenge. Each team receives a camera drone equipped with depth camera and onboard computer. A maze will be set up in the droneSpace. The task for each team is to explore and map this maze with the drone and look for markers and report back the position of the markers. Basic navigation of the drone will be performed with the Optitrack tracking system. Teams will need to implement path planning, mapping and marker detection using the onboard sensors. Rules of the rescue challenge can be found in this document. For more details about the lecture and the droneSpace in general please also refer to the Camera Drones Lecture Introduction at the droneSpace homepage of the Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision.

Grading

The course grade will be based on the grades for the project work, project presentation and a questionnaire.

Times and dates:

  • First lecture will be in the ICG Seminar room (IE02082) on 10.10.2018 14:15-15:45
  • Course quizz will be on 16.1.2019  at the usual lecture times (calculator needed).

Lecture slides: 

  • Lecture 1 - Camera drones overview (PDF)
  • Lecture 2 - Flight mechanics, Control and Sensors (PDF)
  • Lecture 3 - 3D Data generation (PDF)
  • Lecture 4 - Flight planning (PDF)
  • Lecture 4 - Regulations for camera drones in Austria (PDF)

(slides will gradually appear here)

Material from last years course:

Check out the droneSpace course for the student projects created last year in this course.

News:

  • Course page updated on 1.10.2018
  • The course will soon be part of the subject area catalogues " Computer Vision and Graphics" and "Robotics and Computational Intelligence" of the ICE Master's programme.