License to skill: System engineering team takes drone training to new heights

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 12 May 2025 18:20:40 +0000

License to skill: System engineering team takes drone training to new heights Nathan Kahl Mon, 05/12/2025 - 14:20

In This Story

A George Mason University team of Systems and Industrial Engineering (SIE) students developed a training system to assist people working toward their drone pilot license.

As part of the project, the team developed a business plan that won Best Paper in the Systems Design Track at the Annual Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Design Competition and Best Paper and Best Presentation in the Modeling and Simulation Track at the GEN Donald R. Keith Memorial Capstone Conference at West Point.

The system incorporates a drone pilot simulator, Zephyr Sim, that was developed separately by George Mason alumni Kyle Bishop, Alex Estep, and Stewart VanBuren, who graduated from the Computer Game Design Program in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and worked at Virginia Serious Game Institute.

All pilots using drones for commercial purposes are obliged to hold a license known as the Part 107 Drone Pilot license. The license, issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), covers all the aeronautic knowledge and the rules-of-the-road for safely flying drones. These rules include establishing where is it legal to fly, how high is too high, how to account for weather, and when and how to notify the authorities about the flight.

Drone flying. Photo credit Public Domain Archive

“To obtain a Part 107 license, all one has to do is pass a multiple-choice exam with about 70 questions,” said SIE student Hannah Nguyen. “Can you imagine getting an automobile driver’s license without the behind-the-wheel driving test? With the Part 107, just pass the knowledge exam and you are good-to-go.”

The team conducted several stakeholder interviews to inform their project, which proved very useful. “After only a few interviews it became clear that enterprises that routinely use drones for data gathering, and image collection were experiencing excess costs due improper handling of the drones by the pilots,” said team member Corbin Phillips.

Team leader Emaan Abbasi added, “We designed a drone pilot training system that integrates drone flying on the simulator in the with the aeronautic knowledge material. For example, in the section on weather, the student practices flying the drone in different wind conditions or with different levels of fog.”

The end product has 17 modules with concepts-maps, video lectures, flash cards, and practice quizzes. Each module has one or more hands-on simulator flying activities. “The training system was thoroughly tested by five students,” said team member Andrew Kuo. “We learned a lot and made several adjustments. In the end, the training to proficiency is reliably faster than the industry best practices.”

“The most enjoyable part of the capstone course was seeing all our hard work come together,” said team member Shakira Mangrio. “The system engineering approach really helped us manage all of the moving parts throughout the year, it was really rewarding to see the final result and present it. And winning awards was icing on the cake.”

Rajesh Ganesan, chair of the systems engineering undergraduate committee, congratulated the team and confirmed that the class SYST 464 Commercial Drone Pilot Training was approved and will be added to the fall 2025 University Catalog. This course will also be part of the aviation flight training and management minor.

Topics

Drones

Unmanned Aerial Systems drones

Training

Students

Students win contests designing delivery drones that respond to real-time wind change

Nathan Kahl — Wed, 08 May 2024 13:09:04 +0000

Students win contests designing delivery drones that respond to real-time wind change Nathan Kahl Wed, 05/08/2024 - 09:09

Part of the charm of tiny Tangier Island, located smack dab in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, is that in some ways it seems stuck in time, with residents speaking an outdated dialect and relying on crabbing for a living. What isn’t so endearing to residents about their simple life is the need to take a ferry to the Eastern Shore to obtain necessities, such prescription medications. Such a trip is an all-day affair, often causing people to miss work and lose wages.

But now Riverside Health System and DroneUp, a delivery service based in Virginia Beach, are working with a team of George Mason University students to deliver medications via a small drone. But even that poses challenges.

“As a part of my systems engineering senior design project, my team and I performed a context analysis and a stakeholder analysis to find the performance gaps for a case study about drone delivery to an island located in the Chesapeake Bay–Tangier Island,” said senior Diana Machuca, who is majoring in systems and industrial engineering. “To bridge the gaps, we designed the Drone Range Dynamic System and came up with a business plan for the project.”

“The route is 15 nautical miles (NM) from Onley, Virginia, to Tangier Island,” said team member Darius Jack. “The route traverses both land and terrain resulting in significant wind shifts, including onshore and offshore winds, depending on the time of day.”

Depending on a drone’s design, it can be very sensitive to wind, requiring extensive analysis. Team member Grean Ramos said, “We developed an aerodynamic simulation of the drone and its batteries. The simulation showed that the 15 NM route is close to the drone's range limit. Any unexpected headwind could result in the drone running out of battery and needing to land before reaching Tangier Island.”

“There are weather stations at Onley and at Tangier Island airports, but no weather stations in-between," said team member Diana Machuca. "We analyzed one year of hourly wind data from the airports and found that headwinds would prevent the drone from reaching the clinic 32 percent of the time.”

Team members Gurkirt Tahim, Darius Jack, Grean Ramon, and Diana Machuca

So the team developed a Drone Range Decision-support System (DRDS). The DRDS uses the aerodynamic simulation described above to continuously monitor the range-remaining as the drone flies. If the simulation estimates that the drone has experienced an unexpected wind and will no longer have enough battery power to reach the destination, it recommends the drone operator to return home (if it can) or to land safely in designated landing zones. Simulations showed winds would require the drone to return home 17 percent of the time.

The team’s plan won First Place in the STEM Track in the Patriot Pitch Competition, a annual contest sponsored by the Costello College of Business at George Mason, and First Place in the Systems and Analytics Track at the Sage Memorial Design Competition, a student-focused international forum for the design of complex systems.

“Working on this project was an amazing experience,” said Jack. “We had to use all the system engineering knowledge and skills we learned over the past three years. Building systems in the real-world is hard, but perseverance and creativity pay off.”

Topics

Drones

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

aeronautics

Patriot Pitch Competition

entrepreneurship

Students