Drones for Agriculture: Prepare and Design Your Drone (UAV) Mission

We are all getting familiar with the image of a drone in the sky. Although flying a drone is fun, drones are not toys. More and more UAVs or drones are used by governments and companies to gain answers and insights on nature, agricultural and metropolitan challenges among other fields. For example, small Drones/UAVs are employed in agriculture for crop observation, crop monitoring, field analysis and map generation through aerial surveys. And with the available software and 'mission planning tools' market growing, so is the demand for knowledge and understanding about their usage and limitations.
Over a period of three weeks you will learn whether it makes sense to use drones for your application, challenge or research question. You will learn how to plan an end-to-end mission (from image acquisition to data visualization) for your specific drone application and how to execute a drone mission safely. After finishing this online course you will have gained full understanding of the aerial mapping workflow and how to implement it in a programmable small drone. You will know which steps you need to take to gain the valuable insights you are looking for.

• Identify whether it makes sense to use a drone for your application or challenge

• Select available UAV technology and image products to your application or challenge

• Identify what international legislation and regulations should be covered in your country

• Perform the required flight preparations and create a safe mission setup

• Define a mission planning with the available open source and commercial tools

• Explain your design choices and expected outcomes

• Present relevant aspects regarding a drone-based application in a convincing and appealing manner

• Assignment oral presentation (40%)
• Performance (60%) Online course progress (mandatory).
• General remark assessment strategy (%) The moment when the (oral) presentation is given is arranged with the course coordinator.