Mission

The mission of Duke AMA is to create a space for students to explore the wide use of drones at Duke. The club provides instruction on how to safely and effectively work with drones, and facilitates student projects that develop new applications for drones. We coordinate student drone activities at Duke, to make flying more accessible yet still safe and well-regulated. All Duke students must be a member of Duke AMA in order to fly in the Duke Forest or on Main Campus.

To learn more about the National Academy of Model Aeronautics, visit: https://www.modelaircraft.org/

Meetings

General body meetings are on Saturdays at 3:00PM at the bottom floor of the Foundry in Gross Hall. Some weeks, we will meet at the Foundry and then drive to the Duke Forest to fly. Individual project meetings will be coordinated among project groups.

Projects

Duke AMA grew from Duke’s participation in the Shell Ocean X-Prize competition, in which Duke students are using a heavy lift drone to deploy sonar pods to map the ocean floor. Since the heavy lift drone is such an essential part of Duke’s X-Prize submission, students became interested in and learned a lot from working with drones. In order to enable students to continue working on a wide range of drone related projects, Duke’s main campus AMA chapter was formed.

We wrapped up the X-Prize competition in Fall 2018, and started the AMA club, we now welcome student’s new ideas for drone related projects. We are also looking for a new use for the X-Prize heavy lift drone. If you have an idea for a drone project, please contact Virginia Pan at virginia.pan@duke.edu.