Title: Course Description and Information
Course: Image acquisition using drones

The purpose of this course is to provide participants with the knowledge necessary to set a safe and adequate drone mapping campaign under the legal regulations of the country. Within this course we will offer material normally delivered in a RPA-L license course. There is not an international regulation on drone flights. Many countries do not have any regulation or they are in the process of building it. For that reason this course will be based more on the safety and mapping expertise that professionals normally respect irrespectively of the country where they operate.

The course is divided in three parts: aviation laws and good aviation practices, Meteorology and navigation and flight plan preparation and mission design.

Aviation laws refers (mainly) to de division of the space in the airspace compartments and where it is allowed to fly. We also talk about the imposed rules of safety and geofences constraining the extension of the flights.

Meteorology and navigation are highly related to safety and mission planning. It gives a common language to understand weather reports and aviation charts.

Finally pre, during and post mission activities remain strictly drone related, however, most of the preparations are common for the same type of drones.

The characteristic of this course is its flexibility since the hard constrains indicated by the national laws are not yet in place, so we look for strategies that will most likely adapt to them in future, keeping room for change the course adopted rules if the circumstances oblige and will not be provided to participants as such.

The table below shows the overall course. Total course duration is 40 hrs, guidance by the lecturer will be for 6 weeks as from the start of the course. This entails that an average weekly effort of about 6 to 7 hours is expected to conduct the course.

By the end of the course, if all assignments are provided and well evaluated, a certificate of attendance will be provided.

Table 1: Course Curriculum

Main topic | Sub topic(s) | Type of study material | Study load (hours)
Course description | Overall course guide | Document | 1
Lesson 1: Aspects of air law.
  - Aviation units and definitions
  - Rules of the air
  - Airspace
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
Exercises
3
Lesson 2: Aircraft general knowledge and flight.
Sub-Topic:

  - Aircraft components
  - Air forces
  - Instruments
  - Batteries
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
Exercises
3
Lesson 3: Flight performance
  - Weight and balance
  - Elements affecting flight execution
PPT
1
Lesson 4: Health and fitness to fly
  - Senses
  - Human data processing
  - Teamwork
  - I’M SAFE (mnemotechnic)
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
2
Lesson 5: Meteorology
  - Meteorological variables
  - Weather forecast
  - Weather mission constraints
PPT
Videos
Exercises
2
Lesson 6: Navigation
  - Elements of aero-cartography
  - Aeronautical charts
  - GNSS
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
Exercises
4
Lesson 7: Operational procedures
  - RPA responsibility structure
  - Safety preparation
  - Risk matrix
  - Pre-flight-postflight execution
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
Exercises
6
Lesson 8: Mission Design
  - Establish the area to be surveyed and the type of mission
  - Communicate between the drone and the app
  - Establish the adequate flying mode
  - Get the control of the drone to bring back in case of necessity
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
Exercises
8
Lesson 9: Flight Preparation
  - Sequence of flight preparations
  - Pre-flight
  - During the flight
  - Pots-flight
PPT
Videos
WWW pages
Exercises
10

Prerequisites

To conduct the course, the following prerequisites are expected from the participants:

- Read, write and speak in English,
- Lessons are correlative. Students needs self-compliance of the actual lesson to initiate a new one (self-responsibility).
- Knowledge of Mapping tools: Google maps, Google EARTH and KML files.
- Knowledge of Office type software.
- Access to internet at all times.
- GIS and RS understanding is preferred
- Proficiency using computers and ability to install software tools used during the course;
- Online access and familiar to use the EENSAT Education portal, upload of assignments;
- Hardware: PC (windows 7 or more), USB, printer.

The course is set-up in such a way that there is no need to be online all the time. There are exceptions to that in regards to the access to explanatory videos done by drone experts in different topics. You can download the documents, exercise descriptions, software tools used as well as the data-sets, the study of the materials and to conduct the assignments can be done mostly off-line.
For upload of your results you should be online again. Questions will be held on-line in question polls.

In order to ensure successful completion, please adhere to the overall course schedule.

Overall course schedule

As from the start of course please take into consideration the expected progress for the duration of the course, to ensure successful completion. Please plan your time schedule over the next 6 weeks in such a way that you can adhere to this proposed schedule.

Week 1 | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 2 | Week 3
Study course guide and start with lesson 1 | Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 Submut Exercise 1 | Lesson 3 Submit Exercise 2 | Lesson 4 Submit Exercise 3 | Lesson 5 Submit Exercise 4
Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 5
Lesson 6 Submit Exercise 5 | Lesson 7 Submit Exercise 6 | Lesson 8 Submit Exercise 7 | Lesson 9 Submit Exercise 8 | Question Hours Submit Exercise 9

 Note: Each block is considered to be approx. 4 hours

During and after completion of the course the exercise results (total of 9 assignment(s), for the lesson(s) should be uploaded into the LMS.