At this point, as far as the students know, Team Cyclone is the only race team in the region that makes a drone fly through a race track with hoops autonomously. The team still participates in the Honors Academy but will cease to exist because their supervisor intends to leave soon. And so, at the end of this academic year, Cyclone will transform into a real student team, because they have no intention of quitting. Laurens Kools: “We do this because we really enjoy it, and we’re making progress.” Currently, the team consists of nine students, and they are busy searching for new members.

Cyclone hopes to organize a drone race at TU/e before the summer holidays. “This is quite a challenge, because we don’t really have any opponents to race against in the Netherlands. We are the only active Dutch autonomous drone racing team. That’s why we would like to compete with manually-controlled drones.” Team Cyclone expects that such a race will prove that their drone is faster and more agile than a manually-controlled drone.

More than racing

Because it is difficult to find opponents for such a race, the team decided to focus on other areas of application as well, including the possibility of using drones to help solve societal problems. That wasn’t their original idea. “That’s right, it wasn’t our first goal,” Kool says, “but we discussed it and realized that the drone could have a broader purpose. We’re already talking to several external parties. Think of things like forest fire prevention and police surveillance tasks.”

Kool says the team is also talking with representatives of the Robots and Autonomous Systems (RAS) section of the Ministry of Defense, located at the military base in Oirschot, but this initiative is still in a very early stage. Doesn’t this make them competitors of that other drone team, student team Blue Jay? “No, quite the opposite,” Kool says, “they focus on indoor use, and we look for ways to use a drone in the outdoor environment. Our teams maintain regular contact.”

The drone currently flies at a relatively slow speed and the members of the team don’t know its exact maximum flying speed. “But for now, speed isn’t our first priority,” Kools says. “Our primary focus during the past year was aimed at making the drone do what we want it to do: fly through hoops autonomously.”

Kools says the team is in need of reinforcement. “We all work part-time and think of it as a hobby, but on a serious level. We’re looking for enthusiastic students who are passionate about drones.”