DRONE DESIGN AND APPLICATION
Description: This interdisciplinary program develops the design and build of fixed-wing and multi-rotor drones at several levels of autonomy, from remote-controlled to human-supervised, to fully autonomous. Topics include the physics of flight, fuselage design, rotor design, drone dynamics, performance and stability, control systems, guidance and navigation, mission payloads, ground control systems, and autonomous systems. Students conceive, design, fabricate (in 3D prototype), and apply drones. This program also covers drone swarms, regulations, security, AI, and machine learning, and touches on emerging anti-drone solutions. Applications of this field are universal and have become omnipresent in most industries. The program emphasizes the applications of drones in the new digital economy by highlighting case studies of the utilization of drones in industries such as like oil and gas, logistics, environment, security, etc.
FIRST SEMESTER COURSE 1:
AE449 – Fundamentals of Unmanned Aerial Systems
This course presents students with the fundamentals of unmanned aerial systems. Coverage includes UAVs components, configurations, classifications, communication frameworks, fundamentals of flight, regulations, safety, and future challenges. Also, the course covers performance, mathematical modeling and system dynamics of UAVs, and common control techniques to improve system’s stability and performance with more emphasis on multirotor UAVs. Students shall apply basic knowledge on a real system, i.e. drones.
Pre-requisities: [MATH 202 OR MATH 208] AND PHYS 102
FIRST SEMESTER COURSE 2:
CIE 483 - Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Robots
Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for robotic systems. Intelligent Agents (IA), blind/uninformed and informed search algorithms for path planning. Relational and associative navigation, behavior coordination, uncertainty, and probabilistic reasoning. knowledge representation methods. Different types of IA architectures (operational, systems and technical) and layers (behavioral, deliberative, interface) within a canonical operational architecture of an intelligent robot. Logical agents, deductive and practical reasoning agents, reactive and hybrid agents, rational agents and how to use such techniques for creating autonomous robots/agents. Fundamentals and practical usage of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, including supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement and evolutionary learning paradigms for implementing autonomous robots/agents.
Prerequisite: Senior Standing
SECOND SEMESTER COURSE 1:
CIE 482 – Path Planning and Navigation for Mobile Robot
Key concepts, algorithms and design of robot motion and navigation in the presence of obstacles and static and dynamic environments with uncertainty. Real-time feedback control to track the planned motion, Cspace obstacles, grid-based motion planning, randomized sampling-based planners, and virtual potential fields. Motion and force control, flying robot trajectory design, UAV’s trajectory.
Pre-requisities: CIE 480 OR AE 449
SECOND SEMESTER COURSE 2:
AE 454 – UAS Design and Integration
Introduction to unmanned aerial systems (UAS), of-the-shelf aerial sensors and supporting platforms. Custom design, integration and calibration of new UAS sensory systems, hybrid power systems and hybrid/non-hybrid civil/military UAS. Physical/aerodynamic design limitations, data quality/accuracy versus speed of UAS function, basic autonomous, swarm intelligence and cooperation strategies. Design ethics, standards and engineering collective consciousness. General Optimization of UAS function and intelligent control.
Pre-requisities: Senior Standing
TO APPLY: https://cx.kfupm.edu.sa/