High School Teams Design Drones of the Future

An award-winning team of North Carolina high-school students are flying their drone concept into the world of law enforcement.

Students at Gaston Early College High in Gastonia, N.C. won the region’s first Cyber Drones Expo last week for Best Business Presentation for a conceptual design that would help campus police do their job better.

“They could use the drone for many things such as surveillance and going to scenes faster because there’s a camera on the drone that you can use,” team member Selvin Lendos told the Gaston Gazette. “We feel that the campus police will benefit from the drone a lot,” he added.

The inaugural expo, held in the Charlotte suburb of Bessemer City, is the culmination of the region’s CyberKids Robotics program which teaches “teach students how to design, build, program and fly drone robots.”

Five area high-school teams developed business plans over the past semester, focusing on the drone tech sector.

For example, Bessemer City High created a concept that envisions drones being used to transport heavier items, including people, in large drones bearing cargo “pods.”

Bessemer team member Chris Turner sees drones of the future relieving crowded city streets: “In places like New York there’s a lot of ground traffic so it would be nice to be able to literally go above that,” Turner said in the Gazette report. “Drones have gotten a really bad rep but this initiative is showing how they can be useful to an entire city or an entire community.”

During the five-month-long class, students figure out how to fly drones, learn aerial videography and optimization of UAV battery life. In other words – flight by trial and error.

“It takes a whole lot of teamwork,” Andy Rhyne, a Gaston Early College High team member. “The robot can just tip over in the air if you’re not working together well.

Bessemer math teacher James Hilburn sees the drone program as a complement to the school system’s STEM efforts (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics.

“[Out students] are going to do something in the future with either this technology or something related,” he added.