Date: 9th July 2023 (Sunday)
Venue: DRAC LAB, UTS
UNITECH student club of UTS organised a Tello Drone competition for secondary school students and public. The event was conducted in two sessions: a morning session and an afternoon session. The morning session is mainly focused on training on how to write a coding command for drones. The session is chaired by UNITECH student club president Michelle Ling Jia Wen (BCS21030006) and the facilitator is the director of DeTeC (Design and technology Centre) UTS, Ts. Daniel Tan Yong Wen. The training is about about the introduction to block programming, which is a type of programming code that is constructed using blocks of command grouped as a whole program.
At the afternoon session, the participants who attended the training session participated in drone coding racing as groups. At the drone coding racing, a random layout is provided by the organiser for the participants to “race” in developing a program using block programming that is implemented into a given Tello Drone. Timer is started when the groups recieved the drone and mission layout. The group with the fastest time of mission completion wins the race. There were seven groups that participated in the race. Among them, three winners with the fastest mission completion time (less than 20 minutes) have won the race. The race was challenging, especially for the participants, who were mostly new to programming development, and the drone was flying autonomously based on their design program. In addition, the windy conditions in the environment have increased the difficulty during the race.
The participants enjoyed the event despite the challenges. All participating groups successfully completed the race within the given time. According to the organiser, they are planning to organise a similar kind of event for the next event. The event is beneficial to motivate young people to learn programming languages and program development.
Here are some photos taken during the event.
