Drone Masterclass 9 April 2019

An orange bee flying inside the netting.

We ran the first Drone Masterclass of 2019 on 9th April. This time it was for 17 year olds, so the content needed to be stepped up a bit. We used a different venue this time around and there was the requirement for netting around the flying zone to prevent any of the drones from escaping. This worked really well using cheap garden netting, which I had cut into 6 foot sections, hung using twine and velcro ties and gaffer taped in places. Setup was definitely a team building exercise, but it all worked perfectly. The one thing I hadn't anticipated was that the netting is virtually invisible, so we ended up placing chairs and other obstacles in front to prevent people from accidentally walking into it and getting caught like a fly in a huge spider's web.



There was no en_topia this time, so I changed around the ordering of the presentation and added some computer science and AI bits which came from our Alpha Pilot submission. All the students were interested in computer science and technology subjects as this workshop was being run as an introduction to computer science. Strangely enough, the parallel workshop session was on urban modelling, so I had to double check which one I was doing.

The flying was a lot more structured this time around, with the 30 students split into 6 groups, with each group building and then being taken into the netted off area to fly. The building was definitely a lot more erratic than last time, with all sorts of variations on sideways, loose and upside down flight controllers, wrong motors and not following any of the colour coding on the wires. A lot of the quadcopters did work really well, though, even if only for a short space of time until a wall or ceiling intervened. I thought we would be untangling props from the nets all afternoon, but, very surprisingly, they seemed to work like a psychological barrier, forcing people to crash into the wall and tables instead. Quite a lot went under rather than into the ceiling. They seemed to be afraid of height and couldn't get out of the ground effect.






This is starting to get a bit strange now, but we always break twice as many B props and red/blue motors as A and black/white. I started out with a fresh pack and the students went through all the Bs and most of the As. Here's the after shot showing how much of the kit survived.

We were flying with the students right up to the last possible minute to ensure everybody had a go, so the tear-down was rather hurried and I think we might have left a lot of broken props for the cleaners to find.

A big thank you to all our helpers, Bin, Jyothi, Carlos and Nadia who are now super proficient in hanging nets and building drones.