Detecting Objects with a Drone

Many call artificial intelligence (AI) a “black box”, which it kind of is. One of the biggest problems of AI is that it’s incredibly difficult to understand how the data is being interpreted. In this talk we will show how you can use this “black box” with a drone to detect physical objects by uncovering the technology behind Computer Vision and Object Detection.

Whether you are counting cars on a road or people who are stranded on rooftops in a natural disaster, there are plenty of use cases for object detection. Often times, pre-trained object detection models do not suit your needs and you need to create your own custom models. In this talk not only will we talk about creating custom models, but we will show an example of you can prototype a drone to detect these objects.

How do we prototype a drone? With Node-RED of course. Node-RED is a free, open source logic engine that allows programmers of any level to easily write code that can connect to APIs, hardware, IoT devices or online services. Users interact with Node-RED via a browser-based flow editor that makes multi-device and multi-API integrations as easy as linking together nodes into easily understood flows which can run locally on your computer, or on IoT a device such as Raspberry Pi or in this case a Tello Drone, and even in the cloud.

By the end of this workshop attendees should be able to walk away with:

• Overall all understanding of Object Detection
• Overall understanding of Node-RED
• Overall understanding of how to program a Tello Drone to detect objects!

Please bring your Meetup RSVP Confirmation & ID to check-in

Agenda:

630pm - doors open, check-in, and get some food
645pm - round-robin introductions & get to know each other
7-8pm - hands-on workshop
8-830pm - additional working time
845pm - venue closes

Who is this event for?

This event is for both beginners and experienced developers, makers, tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and anyone who is interested in object detection.

Get a head start with IBM Cloud, sign up via: https://ibm.biz/Bdzg7q

About the Presenter

Pooja Mistry (@poojamakes) is a developer advocate for IBM Cloud. She works on expanding the reach of IBM's technology to New York City's developer community. Her area of interest includes prototyping with NodeRED and working with AI services to build fun and interesting things! Prior to living in NYC, Pooja lived in Boston, MA where she was working as an API automation engineer in the healthcare tech industry. She mainly works in Javascript and Java, however she tinkers with Python. She is currently passionate about Node-RED and building IoT applications using Node-RED services. She is a strong believer in helping new technologist get up and running with technology and feel confident in their abilities to make!