FARMINGTON — The drone’s flight was short. It rose to the end of its 75-foot tether and crashed.

“It was a successful first flight with an unsuccessful landing,” said Richard Wilde, computer technology teacher at the Foster Career and Technical Education Center. 

Over the past two years, students in Wilde’s robotics class have designed and built a drone for the Farmington Police Department.

“We found some design flaws during the drone’s one flight last year,” Wilde said. 

The goal of Thursday’s launch was to test its flight capability, the ability to control it and to see how long it could fly. The time was estimated by the duration of one battery instead of the three it normally carries.

It was supposed to fly until the battery ran out and then land on its own as programmed, Wilde said. Three batteries are expected to provide about 30 minutes of flight time.

But during an initial attempt to launch Thursday, the chopper flipped and landed on the global positioning system. Without the navigator, it did not know where to go, Wilde said. One arm and one propeller were damaged, he said, “nothing a couple of days can’t fix.”

The local Police Department could use the drone for search-and-rescue missions, Farmington Police Chief Jack Peck said. An attached front-load infrared camera, known as a FLIR, can provide heat-based images. It can also be used for training and at accidents where there is the potential for poisonous vapor or gas, Peck said.

Before the drone is used by the department, a policy will be created, Peck said. 

The 22-pound chopper, loaded with batteries, was designed to carry about 20 pounds and four cameras, Wilde said. It could carry and drop a rope to a person who broke through ice or search for someone lost in the woods.

With public concerns about police surveillance, the drone was intentionally designed to be too large for urban areas, Wilde said. They didn’t want it flown around houses or towns.

About the time Tennessee hiker Geraldine Largay went missing on the Appalachian Trail in northern Franklin County in 2013, Wilde asked the department if there was some way the class could help.

A drone, capable of carrying a FLIR camera, was their choice, he said.

The hexagonal chopper is a student design, built with a computer program before a single piece of the rigid, sturdy carbon fiber was cut for it, Wilde said. It took three or four designs and the creation of a 3-D model before construction could start.

About 24 students have worked on the drone over the two years. Five students, Nick Bell, Nate Vining, Michael Deming, Alex Dalrymple and Duncan Grant, worked for two years but graduated last week, he said.

So far, about $6,000 has been invested in the project, paid for with funds that the students earned, Wilde said.  

“No money — no money has come from taxpayer dollars,” Wilde said.

When the school changed laptop computers, the state wanted the old ones back, he said. Programs had to be cleared, so Apple contracted with the robotics class to do the cleanup work, he said. They were paid $35 for each computer and earned about $10,000.

Some equipment will be kept for the class, but the local police will be given the drone, a controller and batteries, worth a total of about $4,000, Wilde said.

The Police Department will pay for the FLIR camera. Peck has sought partnership with Farmington Fire and Rescue to budget for the camera, he said.

abryant@sunmediagroup.net

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