What the program needs
Support
TrueGrade already runs its own requirements, reviews, and documentation. What's missing is standing outside the team's control to provide: oversight, resourcing, and access. Below are the specific, low-friction things a faculty advisor or sponsor can say yes to.
A funding pathway
A route to resourcing the build year. The v0.1 avionics bill of materials estimates roughly $7,000 for one complete air-vehicle system, ground control, and an RTK base — a current-market estimate to be verified before order, with full per-part requirement traceability behind it.
The funding proposal is due September 1, 2026.
What else the program needs
- A faculty advisor
- Technical oversight and sponsorship. We run the reviews and produce the documentation — the commitment is a few design reviews across the year, not a standing time burden.
- Lab / build space & flight-test access
- Lab and build space, secure storage for hardware between builds, and a path to an authorized flight-test site the team can plan a test campaign around.
- MDOT CORS access
- Access to the Michigan Department of Transportation's CORS network corrections — the survey-grade GNSS reference the accuracy claim depends on (see Technology). An institutional-access ask, not a purchase.
- A home program
- Guidance on whether TrueGrade fits within an existing multidisciplinary design program, which could provide the structure, continuity, and sponsor connections a durable student program needs.
Industry mentorship
The team is in early conversations with people who build autonomous drone systems professionally. That section is on hold pending a founder decision on what's ready to publish — not published here yet.
Get in touch
A contact form for this page — a Cloudflare Workers submission handler with Turnstile and a honeypot field — is planned and not yet built. In the interim, Cloudflare Email Routing forwards the address below to the team's inbox.
contact at truegrade dot u s