ECPS 295 LEC A: DRONES (15295)

Fall 2026

Professor & Class Schedule

Peter Burke

e-mail: pburke@uci.edu

Undergraduate tutors (see admin for job description):
Yutaro Urata
Eric Lai

Code:

15295

Lectures:

TuTh   11:00-12:20p    ICS 180

Labs: 

ET 202 is open for building drones all day Wed and Fri 8-5 with help available from the professor at those times.

W   2:00- 4:50p    ET 203

ET437 will be open (unsupervised) 9-5 M-F for use under the "buddy system".

ET301 will be open (No Buddy Required - Student Worker there at at times) 9-5 M-F 

ECPS curriculum

The MECPS plan of study has Drones in the 5th quarter, not in the 1st. The MECPS program enforces this.  Students can still take the class the following year if they are just starting.

Schedule: 

Build photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WRvrGrdT2diFNowm9

Build photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3e3cYYduQNnckSqV8

Parameter file checklist (upload your parameter file to confirm checklist)

Youtube tutorials for this course:

Drone avionics playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMdLsDgspkNS3k7Mr50BD2Gm1fHcUkouB

And on Rumble:

https://rumble.com/c/c-6699371

Useful URLs:

https://canvas.eee.uci.edu/courses/72618/pages/drone-urls

Textbook:

Professor will provide online learning materials

You might find this article about the pedagogy used in this class interesting:

Peter J. Burke, Patrick Wei, M Fakih, Diane Burke
Drones from A to Z: Experiential Learning at Its Finest
https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.175695608.82891552/v1

Enrollment/prerequisites:

There is no course prerequisite.

Grading Components:

Grading rubric:

Team builds a drone but it does not fly : C

Team builds a drone and it flies in manual mode: B

Team builds a drone and completes a fully autonomous flight in 20' cage (Takeoff, waypoint, autoland): B+

Team builds a drone and completes a fully autonomous flight (Takeoff, waypoint, autoland): A-

Team implements agentic AI in a loop (calling LLM via API) in 20' cage: A

Team implements AI with vision based navigation: A+

Milestones must be met on time to achieve this grade (see schedule). One late milestone will be accepted. After that, any additional late milestones will decrease the grade by a plus/minus step.

Students are expected to attend at least 2 guest lectures, or grade will go down by one increment.

Course overview

This will be a theory and hands on tutorial about how to build and fly drones/unmanned aerial vehicles from start to finish. It will cover all aspects including drone avionics, batteries, power, motors, airframes. At the end of the course students will have built and flown their own drone. The drone parts will be provided by the department (see lab fees below) and each week students will install a new component after a theory lecture on its operation. The drone will use Ardupilot (open source software already installed on over 1 million vehicles), and will be fully capable of autonomous, GPS guided way point missions, and will have wireless telemetry to a ground control station. Students will be expected to demonstrate fully flight capabilities for achieving a passing grade. The students will be expected to pass a short online FAA exam and follow all FAA and UC drone policies during the course.

The design is here: (We will be using a different flight controller this year).

https://rotorbuilds.com/build/33054

Course Outline/topics

Week 1: Safety, FAA, UC regulations

Week 2: Flight controllers (overview of the brain of the drone; firmware programming and demonstration on actual hardware) Barometer, Micro controller, UART, PWM and other modulation techniques

Week 3: Radio control. Protocols, theory of RF remote control. Firmware installation and programming of radio receiver on drone and radio transmitter on the ground (using ESP32 ExpressLRS open protocol). Aileron, elevator, throttle, rudder, flight mode selection, arm/disarm, fail safe (lost link) behavior.

Week 4: Power, batteries, ESCS. Battery technology, safety, charging, storage, handling. Brushless motor function and electronic control with electronic speed controllers. 

Week 5: GPS + other positions aids (LIDAR, sonar, optical flow, etc): Theory of operation, accuracy. Connect and demonstrate GPS coordinates on flight controller.

Week 6: Video and heads up display. Analog and digital protocols. Install camera on drone with video transmitter, program heads up display overlay (GPS, speed, alt, etc). Demonstrate receive with video monitor.

Week 7: Flight modes, maiden flight in drone cage in manual flight mode.

Week 8: Telemetry to ground: RF modem, wifi, 4G /cell phone, Crossfire, etc. Demonstration with ESP32 based wifi transponder using DroneBridge. Ground control stations.

Week 9: Flight modes and autonomous missions. Waypoint missions. Auto-takeoff/autoland.

Week 10: Remote ID, Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM), network/cloud integration of drones, drone swarms. (Students will install a remote ID module on their drones this week).

Week 11: Final project due: Flight demonstration