Teaching Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Concepts at the Undergraduate Level: One Approach

The US Air Force Academy has developed an interdisciplinary approach to teaching Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) concepts at the undergraduate level. UAVs are interdisciplinary by nature, and therefore there are opportunities for many different disciplines to work on various aspects of this system. During a two-year period, over 100 faculty and cadets from seven different departments have used the UAV to achieve learning objectives specific to their discipline. These efforts have included four year-long design course projects, nine semester long design projects, and seventeen laboratory and independent study projects. Outputs from projects in one discipline often feed into class projects in other disciplines. For example, the man-machine interface design in a Human Factors design course was fed into the Computer Science UAV ground station design. This interdisciplinary reinforcement happens deliberately through the interactions of the USAF Academy UAV Research Group, which meets monthly to coordinate research between departments. Projects build on the efforts of previous classes, and a spiral approach to develop UAV systems is used. The next goal of the UAV research group is to develop an interdisciplinary course in UAVs, and some of the initial thoughts for this course are discussed.