Autonomous Drone

With the rapidly growing use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the modern world, drones have been integrated into numerous applications in our society whether it is for military or tactical use or for day-to-day services. One such application is delivering fish feed to aquarium tanks by predefining coordinates onto the drone’s system for autonomous flight services. This would eliminate the need for workers to constantly drop fish feed into tanks that are usually placed in complicated setups that would prove troublesome to access. This project aims to utilize the DJI F450 quadcopter to program autonomous flight in order to deliver appropriate fish feed to aquarium tanks while integrating a custom fish feed dropper. Future goals of the project include autonomous indoor flight using sensors as well as environment mapping using lasers integrated onto the drone to generate a 3D render of a confined space. Results from this study can provide useful insight on how autonomous drones function in addition to providing future applications for such technology.

Students

• Fernando Gorrin-Rivas