1. Principles and practices

Final Project

For the First Week of FabAcademy I will start to design an idea for my final project.

The inspiration for my idea is my six year old nephew Mats. A short while ago, he found a cool-looking drone in a trash bin near a small river. He got very excited and wanted to repair it with me. As we started disassembling, we found out that nearly all the electronics inside werent usable anymore. So we gave up the repair of it and transformed it into a ceiling light instead, that turned out quite nice. As a gift for Mats, I now want to create a child-friendly, easily-operated indoor-drone as my FabAcademy 2020 project.

Sketching the Idea

The Drone

Top view:

As you can see in the image above, there are sonar sensors in four directions horizontally. The rotors are surrounded by borders to avoid human- and object-collision with those sensible parts.

Side view:

In the side-view you can see the top and bottom sonar sensors. These will also help avoiding collision and improve the landing of the drone.

The Remote

The remote will be designed as simple as possible. A four-directional control pad will make the drone fly forward and backward or to rotate it clockwise or counterclock-wise.

The button in the center has two functions: starting and landing the drone.

The two buttons on the right make the drone fly higher or lower.

To ensure a simple way of controlling the drone, I consider blocking other input-options when one button is pressed. This way, errors can be prevented and a more precise steering for unexperienced users is made possible.

Primary features in a nutshell:

  • protected rotors

  • 6-direction sonar sensors for collision-avoidance

  • easy to control remote

  • small & light-weight to make it suitable for indoor use.

  • automatic start and landing.

  • single input only.

My FabAcademy instructor Daniele Ingrassia worked on a drone on his final project in FabAcademy 2015. He used sonar sensors to make the drone avoid obstacles.

Here you can find his project documentation:

Other Links: