Drones and Math

  I am in Hawaii to present at and attend the Kamehameha Schools Educational Technology conference.  One of the talks I attended was an introduction on drones.  During her introductory presentation, she discussed a few mathematical concepts and I wondered what other mathematics could be used with drones.

First she mentioned they had to use trig to figure out how to have the drone fly to the exact same place every hour so photographs could be snapped. 

The idea was to see the progression of smog as it settled down around the city.  Once the photos were taken, they were put together to create a longer piece, like a video so people had a better idea of smog movement.

In the class, she had students create a flight path mimicking a regular pentagon.  That involved a lot of discussion on the best way to accomplish it.  One student finished much earlier than the others so she had him create a circular path because she thought it was not possible.  He made a 360 sided polygon and used that for the circular path. 

I can't remember which mathematician used the idea that if you had a polygon of enough sides, you'd end up with a circle.  I know that many Alaska Natives use this technique to create patterns for circles.  To me this was a valid way to attack the problem and his final product did look like a circle.

Just these three topics came up in her short 50 minute presentation.  It seems to me that there is a lot more mathematics involved such as:

1. Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, and Circles.

2. The Pythagorean Theorem and Trigonometry.

 

3. Vectors.

 

4. Linear Algebra and Coordinate Transformations.

 

5. Differential Equations.

 

6. Fluid Flow and Airfoils.

 

7. Statistics.

 

So many different types of mathematics found in using drones.  This  is another way to make mathematics more real so they want to learn.  

 

Let me know what you think, I'll share more things I learn tomorrow and I'll return to this topic a bit later on.  Have a great day.