The Laboratory of Unmanned aerial vehicles (Labdron) located in the Engineering School of Extremadura University (Badajoz, Spain) have started novel activities to introduce our engineering students in the UAV environment.

We have prepared courses to explain how to program UAVs and we have planned some seminars to introduce students in different technologies, such as UAV simulators, raspberry pi/arduino integration, UAV sensors, communication mechanisms and so on.

We have just finished several interesting projects:

• The first one is focused on controlling one quadcopter (pixhawk) using a robotic glove. This device is integrated different types of sensors to detect finger movement, and also hand position and its acceleration. This glove has also a wireless connection to send mavlink commands to the quadcopter in order to move it as desired. You can see a demonstration presentation here1,

• The second provides a system to control UAVs using only the voice. The project is also focused on quadcopters (pixhawk) although it can be used with any other type of UAVs. A smartphone receives the voice, then it identifies the specific command through artificial intelligent, next a corresponding mavlink command is generated, and finally, the package is send to the UAV. You can see a demonstration video here.

• The third one tries to detect obstacles using ultrasonic sensors controlled by an arduino device. Sensors send an a specific sound which bounces in an object. When this sound is detected by the sensors, arduino device estimates de distance of objects. At this point, if there is any object in its vicinity, Arduino sends a command to stop or even to move in the opposite direction. You can see a demonstration video here.

I hope you enjoy this projects.

Jose Luis Herrero