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Specialization in Drones and Autonomous Systems

The new drone specialization entails a full four semesters master programme dedicated to drones in close cooperation with the area of artificial intelligence.

The semesters as organized as follows:

First semester
First semester provides a general introduction to drones, autonomous systems, AI, electronic embedded systems, scientific working methods, and relevant mathematics (multivariate statistics).

Second semester
Second semester provides more specific courses, getting into deeper technical details on drones (guidance, navigation, control, perception) and bio-inspired autonomous systems, as well as AI and the mechanics of building an aerial system. An elective course ise used to go deeper into selected topics.

Third semester
Third semester mainly concerns integration of various skills, focusing on the Experts in Teams project course that combines open-ended innovation in a cross-disciplinary team with a deep technical contribution in the area of drones and autonomous systems.

Fourth semester
Fourth semester is finalization in the form of the MSc.
The Drones and Autonomous Systems specialization has a constituent part e.g. scientific methodology, fundamental artificial intelligence, image processing, mechanical engineering for aircraft and unmanned aerial system design.
Furthermore the programme relates to five different research areas, which you can read more about below.

Research area: Unmanned aerial systems

  • Flight controllers
  • Aircraft navigation and path planning
  • Ground control systems
  • Payload sensor- and actuator platforms
  • Reliable and redundant safety systems
  • Aircraft software engineering
  • Aviation legislation

Research area: Robotics

  • Kinematics
  • Robot system and automation engineering
  • Motion and task planning
  • Mathematical modelling of industrial systems
  • Computer simulation and animation

Research area: Artificial Intelligence

  • Classic artificial intelligence
  • ”Behaviour-based” artificial intelligence
  • Neural networks
  • Generic algorithms
  • Adaptive robots
  • Bio-inspired robots

Research area: Embedded systems

  • Programmable electronics
  • Hardware/software co-design
  • Hardware-near programming
  • Wireless communication systems (hardware and software)
  • Motor control

Research area: Computer vision

  • Image processing
  • Object recognition
  • Real-time tracing of dynamic objects
  • 3D Kalman filtering

Read more about curriculum and subjects.


Faculty of Engineering University of Southern Denmark

  • Campusvej 55
  • Odense M - DK-5230

Last Updated 05.07.2023