Urban UAVs was a honors seminar that I took in the fall of my 2nd year at UC. The mission of the class was to teach students about UAVs, from flying them, to their history, to their functions, and how to create a business based on UAVs.
The class consisted of three components. The first was a lecture and class discussion on Mondays about the history of UAVs, legal issues with UAV based businesses, how UAVs work, and about the projects that we were pursuing. The second was a lab on Wednesdays where we built a UAV of our own, and learned to fly 2 different types of UAVs. The most important and time intensive part of the course was the project milestones. We were required to come up with a business model for a UAV based business that would fulfill a need in today's society and complete several milestones on the project throughout the semester.
My partner and I came up with the idea of Skypainter. Skypainter is a drone that would be able to paint large scale structures, such as buildings and bridges.
The main attraction for this is the safety aspect. A painting contractor using Skypainter would not have to use scaffolding, improving safety for the workers. Also, heavy machinery would not have to be used, reducing emissions and traffic detours caused by painting. One of the milestones was getting customer feedback from potential customers and partners and we further developed our idea. As a result, we added a potential camera to get a visual of the work while it was being done, a better spray nozzle, and realized that the best paint would be a dryfall and anti-corrosive mix. The drone would be manually operated to ensure it meets that FAA requirement and to improve safety if there is drone malfunctioning. The drone would also be tethered, so if it fails, it will not fall onto a person.
Our final project consisted of making an infographic and a video.
The infographic is here: Skypainter Infographic
Our final video is located here: https://youtu.be/fw62HkEgFlE
The class consisted of three components. The first was a lecture and class discussion on Mondays about the history of UAVs, legal issues with UAV based businesses, how UAVs work, and about the projects that we were pursuing. The second was a lab on Wednesdays where we built a UAV of our own, and learned to fly 2 different types of UAVs. The most important and time intensive part of the course was the project milestones. We were required to come up with a business model for a UAV based business that would fulfill a need in today's society and complete several milestones on the project throughout the semester.
My partner and I came up with the idea of Skypainter. Skypainter is a drone that would be able to paint large scale structures, such as buildings and bridges.
The main attraction for this is the safety aspect. A painting contractor using Skypainter would not have to use scaffolding, improving safety for the workers. Also, heavy machinery would not have to be used, reducing emissions and traffic detours caused by painting. One of the milestones was getting customer feedback from potential customers and partners and we further developed our idea. As a result, we added a potential camera to get a visual of the work while it was being done, a better spray nozzle, and realized that the best paint would be a dryfall and anti-corrosive mix. The drone would be manually operated to ensure it meets that FAA requirement and to improve safety if there is drone malfunctioning. The drone would also be tethered, so if it fails, it will not fall onto a person.
Our final project consisted of making an infographic and a video.
The infographic is here: Skypainter Infographic
Our final video is located here: https://youtu.be/fw62HkEgFlE