Electronics Integration, Image Processing, and Initial Flight Tests

In April, the mechanical structure of our drone was finalized after completing the last set of design revisions. With the overall layout now locked in, we moved on to assembling the electronics. Each component was carefully soldered, tested, and then mounted onto the frame to complete the UAV’s electronic integration.

On the software side, we focused on the drone’s onboard vision system. A custom dataset was prepared based on our target object classes, and a model was trained accordingly. After a series of performance tests, we finalized the image processing algorithm to be used during flight.

This month also marked an important milestone: our first flight test. During this initial flight, one of the PLA-based motor mounts broke due to mechanical stress. As a result, we chose to replace all motor mounts with aluminum parts to improve strength and reliability.

The very next day, we conducted another round of test flights. This time, both manual and autonomous flight modes were tested, and the drone performed as expected