It seems drones are everywhere these days. If you go to a scenic location, chances are good that you’ll hear that buzzing noise nearby soon. But one needs a dedicated place to develop and research about drones ‒ a drone lab, to be sure. Today, we will talk of what is inside a drone lab.
What is a Drone?
Drones, or to be more formal, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are small aircraft that you can control from the ground with a dedicated controller. This is a very broad definition, though. There are a bewildering variety of drones that come in all shapes and sizes ‒ from tiny fits-in-the-palm toys to military remote controlled airplanes capable of bombing a whole village. Drones are a very young technology, at least in the public sector. The concept of remote controlled aircraft is nothing new but in the consumer sector the revolution has just only begun. Nowadays, we are using drones for a lot of stuff ‒ from taking pictures and videos to analyzing large 3D spaces to counting trees and finding geographical faults. Once they were a technology reserved for the elite and the special, but now drones have become accessible and affordable to pretty much anyone.
What is a Drone Lab?
The room where students build, maintain, and modify their drones and drone parts is called the Drone Development Area. Since this science is very common to STEM, an existing STEM lab with a dedicated drone assembly/maintenance table will do fine as a drone development zone. It includes:
- Electronics station
- Soldering booth (can be integrated into the electronics station)
- Assembly and maintenance desk
- Drone gimbal rig (to test a drone’s stability)
- Storage cabinets (open and shuttered)
- Lab safety/emergency booth
Methodology of Setup
An ideal drone testing area should be 18 feet by 24 feet in floor space and 15 feet of vertical clearance. The net should be at most 1-inch square mesh. The drone testing area is indoors and permanent. Hang loops and bars and rods from the ceiling to create an obstacle course. Add motion-detection cameras in four corners to track your drone’s performance precisely. Use glass instead of net. Project location photos on a wall and test to see if the drone recognizes obstacles. There are lots of possibilities you can explore with an indoor drone testing facility.
Outdoor Labs
If you are testing outdoors, consider equipping your students with high-visibility work vests (yellow or orange) so that people don’t jostle them accidentally while they are holding delicate equipment and working. If they are going to work inside the testing area, then equip them with hard hats as well. It is not a pleasant experience when a flying drone hits you on the back of your head.
Future
Drone Technology is one of the emerging Technologies and is expanding its wings into real applications like Medicine delivery, Postal delivery, Agriculture, Army and many more. Expecting a wide range of applications and opportunities in future. Inside a Drone Lab initiated to provide extensive training to the students in this domain to avail the opportunities in the upcoming future.
