Study 15 hrs/week and complete in 4 months
In this program, you’ll learn from world-class experts and write aircraft-ready code. You’ll master controls, planning, estimation, and more. In an increasingly congested world, flying cars look to the skies to provide smart transportation solutions that benefit us all.
Learn from instructors who are leaders in this transformational field. Work with the pioneering thinkers who are actively creating the next-generation of autonomous flight systems.
Work with Udacity’s custom-built flight simulator, and benefit from personalized guidance as you port your code to actual drones and contribute to open source projects.
Master cutting-edge skills in controls, planning, and more. Start writing your own code to solve the real-world problems experts in the field grapple with daily.
Sebastian Thrun and the Udacity Flying Car team are pioneering educators in this field, and Udacity offers the only program of its kind, where you can learn everything you need to know to launch a successful career as a flying car and autonomous flight engineer.
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To optimize your chances for a successful application to our Flying Car Nanodegree program, we’ve created a list of prerequisites and recommendations to help prepare you for the program curriculum.See detailed requirements.
Learn about our quadrotor test platform, work in our custom simulator, and build your first project—getting a quadrotor to take-off and fly around a backyard!
Optimize 2D solutions using waypoints, then scale solutions to 3D problems. Apply these skills by autonomously navigating your drone through a dense urban environment.
Moving a flying vehicle requires determining appropriate low-level motor controls. Here, you’ll build a nonlinear cascaded controller for your drone system.
Utilize sensor fusion and filtering. Design an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to estimate attitude and position from IMU and GPS data of a flying robot.
Learn the dynamics of fixed-wing flight and apply what you’ve learned by writing code to control a fixed-wing aircraft in simulation.
“Flying Cars and drones are the future of transportation, and they will massively change the world. Autonomous systems are the key to this future. Graduates will be immediately qualified to work in, and shape, this incredible field.”— Sebastian Thrun
Instructor
Nicholas Roy is a Professor in the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics, and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, at MIT. He also founded Project Wing at X.
Instructor
Angela is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), and an Associate Director of the Center for Aerial Robotics Research and Education (CARRE) at the University of Toronto.
Instructor
As the founder and president of Udacity, Sebastian’s mission is to democratize education. He is also the founder of Google X, where he led projects including the Self-Driving Car, Google Glass, and more.
Instructor
Raffaello is a Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. He is also the founder of Verity Studios, and a co-founder of Kiva Systems (now Amazon Robotics).
Instructor
Sergei has a PhD in MechE from ETH Zurich and a BS in ECE from Cornell. He brings experience from projects such as industrial drones, self-driving cars and controls testbeds. He is a TED Fellow and founder of Fotokite.
Product Lead
Jake is a PhD Candidate in AI at Stanford University focused on robotics, perception, and human-centered design. Prior to serving as Product Lead at Udacity, he founded an early-stage food-technology startup and consulted on flying cars.
Curriculum Lead
Andy has a bachelor's degree in physics from MIT, and taught himself to program after college (mostly with Udacity courses). He has been helping Udacity make incredible educational experiences since the early days of the company.
(80)
It exceeded my imagination. I acquired really advanced and immediately practical knowledge.
Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to finish program (because of my personal issues) But it was useful and interesting!
Challenging ,yes i learnt a lot.Great platform to learn new technologies.
great
Excelente programa, pude aprender desde el funcionamiento dinámico del dron hasta el control y seguimiento de trayectorias planificadas por un RRT.
total
Apply controls, estimation, and planning methods to autonomously navigate a quadrotor.
The emerging generation of flying car engineers will reimagine how we move and transform how we live. The Flying Car Nanodegree program will prepare you to be at the forefront of this technological and societal revolution.
In this program, you’ll learn from world-class experts, work with cutting-edge tools, and tackle real-world challenges. You’ll master techniques in planning, controls, and estimation. Most importantly, you will learn by doing, writing aircraft-ready code that you can run on your own drones.
If you’re interested in flying cars, drones, autonomous systems, and/or the future of smart transportation, this Nanodegree program is for you!
As a graduate of the world’s first flying car engineering program, you will be prepared for positions pertaining to aerial robotics, autonomy and mobility. Job titles in this industry vary, but include: Unmanned Aircraft Software Engineer, Software and Controls Engineer, Guidance Navigation and Controls (GNC) Engineer, Aerial Roboticist, and more.
With experience architecting sophisticated yet safe autonomous systems, you will also be prepared for jobs far beyond aerial systems, including: Autonomous Driving Engineer, Autopilot Engineer, Robotics Software Engineer, IoT Engineer, and more.
This Nanodegree program is an advanced specialized program in aerial vehicles—transformational technologies that are reshaping our future and driving amazing new innovations. If you are interested in developing the skills to build an autonomous aircraft system, and excited by the opportunity to port your code to real drones, this is the perfect way to get started.
The Flying Car Nanodegree program is a specialized program for aerial vehicles. The focus will be on developing the skills to build an autonomous aircraft system, with a focus on quadrotors. This means a unique emphasis on planning and autonomy for three-dimensional mobility, involving hands-on projects in simulation, with the opportunity to port your code to real drones.
The Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree program provides an introduction to software and artificial intelligence as applied to robotics. The areas we focus on are perception, localization, path planning, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and control. These are taught using the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework. All of the techniques required to complete the projects in the Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree program (including machine learning) are taught as part of the program.
The Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program focuses entirely on a specialized application of robotics—it uses robotics concepts and applies them to a self-driving car. If your primary interest is in the application of robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to self-driving cars, then this is the program for you. However, if you want a broader and more comprehensive robotics curriculum, with an emphasis on software engineering, then the Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree program is your best option.
Yes. To ensure your success in this advanced Flying Car Engineer Nanodegree program, we require an application that will take a holistic look at your programming, technical, and quantitative background.
We have an admissions process for certain Nanodegree programs where we need information about a student’s background experience in order to ensure the curriculum is appropriate for a student’s individual learning path. For more information on application processes, see here.
Students should have prior experience with the following:
We have a number of Nanodegree programs and free courses that can help you prepare, including:
The Flying Car Nanodegree program is comprised of one (1) four (4)-month term. Students must complete the term and pass all to graduate from the Nanodegree program.
Each project will be reviewed by the Udacity reviewer network and platform. Feedback will be provided and if you do not pass the project, you will be asked to resubmit the project until it passes.
Access to this Nanodegree program runs for the period noted in the Term Length section above.
See the Terms of Use and FAQs for other policies around the terms of access to our Nanodegree programs.
Please see the Udacity Nanodegree program FAQs found here for policies on enrollment in our programs.
Once you have completed the Flying Car Nanodegree program, the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program and the Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree program are ideal for continuing your learning.
For the Flying Car Nanodegree Program, the minimum computational requirements are
We also recommend that you obtain Bitcraze’s Crazyflie STEM drone bundle which you can port your code to, but it is not required.