Here at ataary we are all about non-traditional education, so we developed our own curriculum with the goal of becoming a Design Technician (on the way to Engineering) capable of designing and constructing an advanced drone or robot. The linked curriculum is in stages Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced; and is all free with the option to pay for certificates for professional use. There is also a Perplexity Space available pre-prompted with the learning goals and outcomes to use as a tutor along the way, and a subreddit for discussion, sharing project, and assistance. This curriculum does require the use of a 3d Printer, some basic tools, $100-200 in parts, and assumes you have at least a high school education.
Our goal is to actually construct a drone or robot after the first stage, and then upgrade or re-design our creation along the way or after each subsequent stage. By the end, we hope to have a drone or robot capable of autonomously delivering a package on a round trip journey.
Courses are split between two main resources, Alison and Autodesk. Alison provides much of our general education understanding, topics like electricity, trigonometry, troubleshooting, etc. while Autodesk provides our tutorials for Fusion 360, our chosen CAD software for this curriculum (which is also free for personal use). All the courses will be linked individually below, we do not use affiliate links, so these are based purely off our use of the courses.
We do have the Alison coursework all lumped together into a curriculum so you can access it easily, but it cannot be linked without a direct email. If you are interested just reach out at [email protected] and we can send you the link to join (again, no affiliate links, just trying to help).
While the courses are in a semblance of preferred order from their respective source, bouncing between sources may provide a break and keep things fresh along the way. Obviously skip topics or jump ahead if you are beyond a particular course.
Our examples and design will be based on a fixed wing drone (airplane) design, and be based around a Raspberry Pi Zero 2w for the controller. That said the curriculum should lend itself to a variety of drone, robot, and controller types, but as we go we will be including examples of our design for reference.
Perplexity Tutor Link – ataary Design Tech subreddit
Basic Design Technician
Alison Topics – 40 hours
– AI For Beginners
– Series Parallel Circuits and Ohm’s Law
– Geometry Basics: Circles, Coordinate Geometry, Locus and Transformations
– Introduction to Trigonometry for Engineering
– Introduction to Electronic Sensors
– Electrical Measuring Instrumentation
– Mechanical Measurement Systems for Simple Measurements
– Mechanical Measurement Systems for Advanced Measurements
– Maintenance and Troubleshooting for Electronic and Electrical Devices
– How To Use A 3D Printer
Autodesk Topics – 12 hours
– Learn Fusion for CAD in 90 minutes
– Sketching
– Part Modeling
– Assembly Modeling
– Drawing
– Animation
– Rendering
Project Capstone – 20 hours
– Design and print/construct a robot or drone chassis capable of movement (does not need to be controlled, any movement is good).
Our focus is on a fixed wing drone, we are going for a general plane shape with a motor and propeller at the front and a rechargeable battery mounted underneath. You might be thinking “I didn’t learn anything about robots or drones yet” and that is true, but you have got the basics of design and some understanding of electronics and motors, so go from the gut, this is design by trial and error while we continue to learn. If you need a couple example motors/parts to design from for dimensions try these: fixed wing basic parts, drone basic parts, and robot basic parts. Obviously these are just a handful of random bits, but they can serve to help direct you down a path to discover what you really want. Also, AI like Perplexity can be incredibly useful for sourcing common motor and part sizes, recommended propeller sizes based off your vehicle design, battery sizing, and more.
Intermediate Design Technician
Coming Soon
Advanced Design Technician
Coming Soon
