Autonomous mapping drone team

TrueGrade

TrueGrade is a student-built autonomous drone that maps a construction site in 3D to a stated, independently-verified accuracy.

The aircraft flies a survey mission on its own and returns a georeferenced 3D model — checked, after the fact, against measurements it was never shown.

≤10 mm

Target

SRR — pending

≤10 mm horizontal RMSE is the v1 target — flagged as the program's largest technical risk until independent checkpoints confirm it at SRR.

How the number gets checked

Before a flight, an independent surveyor establishes control points across the site and holds back a subset of them — coordinates the reconstruction never sees. After the flight, TrueGrade's model is compared against the withheld points. The gap between the two, not a specification, is the reported accuracy.

No flight has taken place yet. The figure above is what the team is designing to, not a result.

Program gates

TrueGrade runs on gated systems-engineering reviews, not a fixed calendar — each phase closes with a review before the next begins.

  1. 01SRRSystem Requirements Review
  2. 02PDRPreliminary Design Review
  3. 03CDRCritical Design Review
  4. 04TRRTest Readiness Review
  5. 05FRRFlight Readiness Review

First flight and the accuracy campaign are targeted for April 2027.