Professionals in different IoT related disciplines mainly Computer Science, Information Technology/Systems, Engineering disciplines, Geospatial Technology/Geography from Rwanda and the East African region have concluded a five -day short course in ‘Multi Sensor Deployment Drone’.

The short course was organized by the African Center of Excellence in Internet of Things (ACEIoT) in collaboration with the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and Rochester Institute of Technology-USA.

This short course is very useful given that the demand for connectivity is driving the IoT for drones/UAVs, better and cheaper micro-electromechanical systems sensors – accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers and often pressure sensors – small GPS modules, powerful processors and a number of digital radios have pushed the controversial devices into the mainstream market.

During this training, participants were taken through different concepts regarding the function of the drones, Aerodynamics, how a drone is built and necessary parts to build one, GPS and how accurate position is calculated using various constellations, the latest laws and regulations pertaining UAV, with a particular focus on Rwanda, how UAVs can be used to gather data coming from IoT nodes on the ground, among others.

Marie Grace Mujawamariya, one of participants finds the training beneficial and timely as she got skills that will help her improve and run her project she is developing.

“We are developing a project about crop diseases detection, with the case of maize crop. From this training, we figured out the types of sensus that will be useful for our project and how these can be implemented and put our project on the market as final product”, she said.

Participants have also experimented some use of the UAVs to see how data can be collected with drones.

In five days, participants acquired skills namely the use of a drone simulator on a smartphone, operating a simulated UAV on a smartphone, identifying security measures when flying a drone, and designing IoT devices given a certain set of application requirements.