2015-08-28: Autonomy Incubator Hosts Student Artists

A group of young students, winners of the annual NASA LaRC Art Contest, and their families stopped by the Autonomy Incubator today for a tour. Following a Dances with Drones demo (#DancesWithDrones) starring Dr. Loc Tran, in which he demonstrated a UAV navigating around obstacles, the kids lined up for a chance to fly a UAV using Meghan Chandarana's gesture recognition program.

A young girl successfully navigates her UAV through an obstacle course. 

Meghan taught the students how to perform a series of simple hand gestures over a sensor in order to navigate the UAV through an obstacle course of trees. Many of the children, such as the young girl above, excelled at the task and were able to successfully fly the UAV through a path and around the obstacles.

Meghan assists a couple of students in navigating the UAV.

Future AI engineers!

Although not all of our UAV pilots picked up the skill with the same dexterity, everyone was excited to learn about AI and to steer the UAVs through the tree maze. Along with other organizations at NASA Langley, the Autonomy Incubator team is proud to support STEM and to spur careers in science and engineering!

A pilot and his co-pilot.