Hi Everyone,

We did it! We just reached our goal of $5000! We could not have done it without each and every one of your generous contributions and shares on social media, so from all of us on the team, THANK YOU!!!

With the $5000 raised here, we can now send (at least) a few core members of our team to each of the 2019 AIRR League events! We now turn our attention back to the code, to make sure that our algorithms are ready for the first race happening at the end of August!

Any more dollars raised will be used towards send more members of the team to the races (plane tickets, AirBnB's, etc.), so if you know anyone else who still may be interested in supporting the only independent team (not backed by a research lab or company) in the 2019 AIRR season, donations are being accepted until Wednesday, July 31 at 12PM.

For more of Formula Drone at UCLA, follow us on our Facebook page! (That's where the social media shoutouts are happening too!)

https://www.facebook.com/FormulaDroneUCLA/

Again, THANK YOU!

Best,

~Jeff & Team

Hello Everyone,

Thanks to all of your incredible donations we hit the 90% mark and just have another $500 to raise to reach our goal! However, there is just over one day left in our campaign, so if you haven't shared our cause with your network, please do so, as every single share, repost, and person you let know about our campaign brings us that much closer to achieving our goal!

When you tell people about our project, be sure to let them know that while we are one of the 9 finalist teams in the AlphaPilot Challenge working towards the future of flying robots, we are also just an independent group of students who have a shared passion for drones, and through this crazy world of drone racing have found ourselves on a once in a lifetime adventure that is taking us all across the US, but bringing us closer together along the way.

Speaking of drones, just because we like working on AI drones doesn't mean we don't also enjoy the manual experience! I hope you enjoy this video made by Jeff (that's me!) as he takes you on a journey through some of his first experiences with the world of FPV drone freestyle.

We will continue posting updates as the competition progresses, but this will be last one while our campaign is still active. Thank you again for your continued support. See you all on the other side!

Best,

~Jeff & Team

Hello everyone!

We are now at 61% of the way to our goal! Huge thanks to everyone who has contributed. This time, we wanted to provide an update on how progress was going on the Challenge itself. That is, we just got back from Boston, MA, for the AlphaPilot Developer Summit.The Summit took place at the MIT Stata Center, and was meant to be an opportunity to collect data and test our code on a physical drone instead of the simulator for the very first time.

On the first day of the summit, we got a chance to meet and hang out with all the other teams, and it was a really great experience to be able to sit and talk with people who have been working on autonomous drones for several years now. Even though we are all competing against each other, everyone was super nice and easy to talk to, which was very valuable for a newer team like us. Additionally, we got access to our snazzy team jerseys (we're the yellow team)!

After the meet and greet, it was time to get to work. On day two, we had the first of 2 scheduled lab sessions to test our code and collect data, but unfortunately we were the very first team to go into the lab. Because of this, we ended up being the guinea pigs for the test setup and systems, which meant we barely got any time to do anything since the drone and race systems were still being debugged. In the first session, we didn't even get a chance to upload our code into the drone, and ended up just doing some data collection by having a professional pilot fly the drone around. After the first session, we felt a little frustrated from all the curve balls being thrown our way, but we didn't linger too long on it and continued to work on our code through the night to perfect it for the next lab session the following day.

On day three, we had our second lab session, and this time, it went much more smoothly. We managed to collect a good amount of data with the help of the pro pilot, but unfortunately found that our code was not able to run on the real drone! The reason for this was a bit of a mystery to both us and the technical lead from the Drone Racing League, since our code worked fine in the simulator. As our session time dwindled, we finally uncovered the line of code that was causing our issue, but right as we were compiling, our time ran out, and we had to leave.

On day four, because of all the issues we had in the first day, we were given one extra lab session so we could finally try and run our code. We only had 30 minutes, so we came in prepared with a game plan ready. Finally, after three long nights, our code was running on the drone! Granted, it was not flying autonomously yet, but it was an accomplishment nonetheless, because now we have a better idea of what code will or will not work on the drone.

At the end of the summit, we spoke with other teams, and it turns out that only two teams were actually able to fly their drone, and only one was able to have it successfully pass through a racing gate. With the first race just a few weeks out, this is a little concerning, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all unfolds!

Thanks again to everyone who has supported us through this journey. Our trip to the AlphaPilot Developer Summit was the first of several events that will be partially supported by your contributions. There are only 10 days left in our campaign, so please continue sharing with your friends and family so we can reach our goal and win this thing!

Best,

~Jeff & Team

Today, we just hit a huge milestone! We are officially 50% of the way to our goal, and that is awesome! Thank you to everyone who has donated, shared, or supported our campaign! Please help us keep the momentum going by continuing to share our campaign with your friends and family. Here's a quick video showing just what your donations mean to us, the members of Formula Drone!