PeAR Seminar Series on Fast Robot Autonomy
Title: Understanding your drone
Speaker: Nicholas Rehm
Johns Hopkins University and dRehmFlight
On Thursday, Dec 07th 2023 from 6:00PM to 7:30PM
Zoom meeting has ended.
Abstract:
It's easy to forget the underlying fundamental principles governing a drone’s ability to stay in the air, especially with awesome libraries, APIs, and autopilots abstracting the hard parts away for someone developing an autonomy. But the interface to control a drone is not always a waypoint message, or even a velocity command. There’s quite a bit of fun and untapped stuff under the hood that opens the door for unique and sometimes wacky capabilities. This talk will cover some unusual applications of drones and dive into the nuances of flight control and end-end system design that can only be truly understood and appreciated through curious experimentation. This presentation is not given as a representative of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, nor does it contain discussion of any work performed there.
Bio:
Nick Rehm has been an avid radio controlled aircraft hobbyist since 2008 with a particular fascination with unique vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft configurations. He studied aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland (’19) and continued on for his master’s in rotorcraft with a focus in dynamics and control (’21). He is now an aerospace engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory integrating AI/ML algorithms on live flight platforms. In his free time, Nick runs an educational YouTube channel approaching 100,000 followers, focusing on applied topics in aerial robotics and drone flight controls.