Manual with Building Instructions for AI-Enabled Drones

Since the summer semester of 2025, a project team from the Computer Science Department at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (Frankfurt UAS) has been conducting numerous research activities and teaching courses on the topic of drones with artificial intelligence (AI).

As a result of this work, a bilingual handbook with technical basics and building instructions for AI-enabled drones is now available. It is designed for various scenarios in research and teaching in German and English and is being continuously developed.

Goal is to Create a Vibrant Community

It was published under a free license.

“Our goal is to create a vibrant community that not only uses these instructions for teaching and research projects, but also develops them further,” says Prof. Dr. Christian Baun, programme director of the Master’s programme in General Computer Science. “Comments and suggestions for improvement are expressly welcome.”

Components for a Tight Budget

The handbook offers an introduction to the complex topic of drones with AI. It focuses on the development (including the selection of suitable hardware and software components), construction, and operation of drones in teaching and research projects.
When selecting the components, particular attention was paid to adaptability to different application scenarios, acquisition costs, robustness, long-term market availability, and the quality of documentation and manufacturer support.

Focus on Practical Applications

A comprehensive treatise on drones and AI is expressly not the aim of the document.

“The focus is on the technologies and solutions that were current at the time of writing and with which practical experience has been gained in the field of computer science at Frankfurt UAS,”

explains Baun.

The focus is on the independent development of AI-supported drone systems by small groups. Each semester, students develop, design, and program innovative systems. Tasks include hardware integration, connecting sensors and AI accelerators, designing, implementing, and testing specific application scenarios such as object and animal recognition, environmental monitoring, inspection and logistics tasks, autonomous navigation, and drop mechanisms.

The handbook incorporates findings from the research project “AI-supported drone platform,” which was funded by hessian.AI from the Connectom Networking and Innovation Fund, as well as from accompanying student theses and experiences from the master’s course “AI Drones” at Frankfurt UAS.

The Department of Computer Science at Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences presents bilingual guidelines on community use for research and teaching – comments and suggestions for improvement are expressly welcome.

The manual is available here.

Source: hessian.ai