Real-world projects from industry experts
With real-world projects and immersive content built in partnership with top-tier companies, you’ll master the tech skills companies want.
Master autonomous flight software engineering skills as you build your career in flying cars and drone robotics.
At 15 hrs/week
Get access to classroom immediately on enrollment
You’ll learn the core concepts required to design and develop robots that fly. You’ll work with the quadrotor test platform and our custom flight simulator to implement planning, control, and estimation solutions.
Here is a list of prerequisites and recommendations to help prepare you for the program curriculum.
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.
With real-world projects and immersive content built in partnership with top-tier companies, you’ll master the tech skills companies want.
On demand help. Receive instant help with your learning directly in the classroom. Stay on track and get unstuck.
You’ll have access to Github portfolio review and LinkedIn profile optimization to help you advance your career and land a high-paying role.
Tailor a learning plan that fits your busy life. Learn at your own pace and reach your personal goals on the schedule that works best for you.
We provide services customized for your needs at every step of your learning journey to ensure your success.
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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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Apply controls, estimation, and planning methods to autonomously navigate a quadrotor.
On average, successful students take 6 months to complete this program.
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.
There is no application. This Nanodegree program accepts everyone, regardless of experience and specific background.
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 content and curriculum to support five (5) projects. We estimate that students can complete the program in four (4) months working 10 hours per week. Each project will be reviewed by the Udacity reviewer network. 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 length of time specified above. If you do not graduate within that time period, you will continue learning with month-to-month payments. See the Terms of Use and FAQs for other policies regarding the terms of access to our Nanodegree programs.
Please see the Udacity Program FAQs 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.