PLS 198: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Agriculture (Spring 2018)

This course on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles combined both theoretical and practical aspects of the use of drones in agriculture. In lecture, students learned about the range of activities being conducted with drones, major classes of software and hardware, how to conduct a research project with drones, and how ongoing issues may affect their use in the future. In lab, students flew manually and programmed autopilot missions, collected imagery with a broad range of sensors, and extracted meaningful data from this imagery using Pix4Dmapper and QGIS in the computer lab. The course culminated with a final project, in which students posed a research question related and answered it using the skills they developed in the class. The class was highly kinesthetic and centered on hands-on development of useful knowledge and skills.