AVIAN ACES: Navigating the Skies with Style

By Bangladesh Flying Labs

To bridge the gender gap in STEM education and careers, it is crucial to inspire and actively involve female students. Encouraging their participation in STEM endeavours will undeniably yield significant positive impacts, fostering a more diverse and inclusive future in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Our most recent programme, a collaborative day-long hands-on workshop titled “AVIAN ACES: Navigating the Skies with Style 2023”, was held on 15th September 2023 at the International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC). We worked with the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society IIUC Student Branch Chapter, in addition to the IEEE Power and Energy Society IIUC Student Branch Chapter and IEEE IIUC Student Branch Women In Engineering Affinity Group. Centred around young women in tech, this programme aimed at introducing drone technology to the enthusiasts who participated in this collaborative effort.

The drone of choice was the Tello Edu, a beginner-friendly educational drone which is popular among drone hobbyists and educators. Starting from the physics behind drone flight and manoeuvres, we showed the participants how to write their programs in Python to navigate the drone. We also taught them how to implement image processing and recognition onto the drones to perform basic image identification tasks. 

The session was graced by the presence of faculty members from various departments of IIUC, who were thrilled to see the participation of their female students in our hands-on program. Bangladesh Flying Labs is a strong advocate for female representation in STEM, and with such a well-rounded program, we remain committed to our goal of bringing drone technology to young learners, especially our eager female students.

We look forward to more opportunities of this nature to arrange workshops for the youth of Bangladesh.