DroneCoach Concept

On September 20th, 2017, a category 5 hurricane hit Puerto Rico, leaving the island without electricity, imposing on FEMA, the Government, and NGOs the insurmountable challenge of planning and prioritizing relief efforts to help 3 million people.



Witnessing this situation, whilst being affected directly by the circumstances, it became my personal mission to help create solutions for emergency response, and since I had no electricity at home and no WiFi I had to think outside the box. Luckily, I had my drone. 



For the IBM Call for Code Hackathon in Puerto Rico, I created DroneAid, an aerial visual recognition system to detect and report signs of distress. Even though this could be accomplished with an automated fleet of drones, today you still need qualified pilots. Pro-level drones cost thousands of dollars, flying them takes weeks to master, and the battery only lasts around 20mins. 



I crashed mine many times while learning, so I practiced on a simulator app in my spare time. However, one of challenges that I encountered was that flying a virtual drone on a 2D screen was certainly not equivalent to the experience of flying a physical drone. This is what I’m hoping to solve with DroneCoach on Magic Leap.



DroneCoach will allow pilots to train indoors in Mixed Reality, with industry specific missions such as: “Search & Rescue”, “Disaster Response”, and “3D Mapping”. In the app, pilots will be able to select popular drones, see them up-close and in real scale, and fly the AR drone with a physical controller. Experienced pilots can practice their skills in difficult climate conditions, like hurricane winds, forest fires, and heavy rain.



On a personal note, whether it’s hurricanes or forest fires, I see DroneCoach as an empowering tool for pilots to safely educate themselves on disaster scenarios like I experienced during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.



Built with Prismatic and VueJS. Powered by Glitch. View in the Helio browser on Magic Leap.



- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUmj68WwnDU

- Demo Link for Magic Leap: http://dronecoachxr.glitch.me/

- Open Sourced on Glitch: https://glitch.com/~dronecoachxr

Steps to try the concept:



***Magic Leap Required***



1. Open the Helio Browser

2. Enter the url https://dronecoachxr.glitch.me

3. Use the controller to select the buttons and navigate the demo.