UH Drone Technologies
The mission of this project is to have an unmanned aerial vehicle fly autonomously while identifying targets on the ground. Once it finds the correct target, it releases an unmanned ground vehicle to deliver a payload to that target. The team consists of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineers. The goal is to compete in the Annual Student Unmanned Aerial Systems Competition (SUAS).
I joined UHDT as my freshman project after the faculty advisor for the project spoke at my dorm. As I am a computer engineering major, I joined the Image Processing subsystem which focused on target recognition.
As a member of Image Processing, my tasks included creating training images for the object detection algorithm. About a semester after I first joined, I took part in pilot and mission operations training. In pilot training, I learned how to fly a fixed-wing drone in case I needed to manually control the aircraft during flight. In mission operations, I learned how each section of the team came together to make one cohesive unit. I learned more about the application used to autonomously control the vehicle and how it works.