Udacity In India Launches Online Course For Flying Cars and Drone Tech

Udacity, the Silicon Valley-based lifelong learning platform, has opened applications for enrollments into its latest Nanodegree – an exclusive program on Flying Cars. This course will feature globally renowned experts as instructors, including Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun (CEO, KittyHawk and acknowledged expert in autonomous systems). Interested applicants can go to the Udacity website, where they can view a free preview of the program and apply for enrolment till February 7th, 2018.

For India’s dense urban sprawls and gridlocked streets, aerial transportation of goods and people is the most viable avenue for smart transportation in the future. The commercial potential for this sector can be seen in market projections from BI Intelligence, which expects sales of drones to surpass USD 12 billion in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2016. The potential applications for these technologies are endless – drones have already been used to provide disaster relief, and can provide supplies or act as an autonomous ambulance in medical emergencies.

Udacity’s aim for this course is to push beyond the current generation of quadrotors and remote-controlled drones, and provide the skills to create autonomous flight systems that will be the transport technology of the future. The course will act as the first step students take into the world of this exciting and developing field. It will prepare students for jobs of tomorrow like Unmanned Aircraft Software Engineer, Guidance Navigation and Controls (GNC) Engineer, Aerial Roboticist, Software and Controls Engineer, and Autonomous Systems Engineer.

Commenting on the opportunities that participants will gain from this program, Ishan Gupta, Managing Director (India) – Udacity said, “Udacity’s endeavour to prepare India’s workforce for the jobs of tomorrow requires us to evolve and help create a larger pool of developers who can contribute to emerging technologies. The Flying Car Nanodegree Program will empower students to translate concepts of drone technology from the classroom to simulation and ultimately build their own self-flying drones. Flying Cars will find application in the aerospace, transportation, technology, and defense industries, and this course will help create the aerial roboticists and autonomous systems engineers that will shape this technology and how people travel in the future.”

Udacity has partnered with Quidich to be the hiring partner for this new Nanodegree in India. Quidich has been using drones in India to create extraordinary aerial cinematography, aerial visual displays, and project/real-estate surveying. Quidich will be providing internship and mentorship opportunities to the graduates of the Flying Car Nanodegree Program, in addition to sponsoring 10 candidates.

Commenting on being the hiring partner for the Flying Car Nanodegree, Rahat Kulshreshtha, Founder and CEO, Quidich, said, “The drone industry has increasingly proved that today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality. Quidich is proud to partner with Udacity for the Flying Car Nanodegree. We believe that this course will fuel the imagination of entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts; while creating a platform to propel aerial technology to new heights.”

The Flying Car Nanodegree Program is a course available exclusively on Udacity. Applicants to this program will be reviewed on the basis of their readiness for the curriculum. Students of the Self-Driving Car Engineer and Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree Programs, as well as Intro to Self-Driving Cars graduates, are guaranteed admission and the opportunity to enrol. The program will consist of two 12-week terms – the first on Aerial Robotics, and the second on Intelligent Air Systems. With the addition of the Flying Cars Nanodegree Program, Udacity now offers potential students the opportunity to embrace the coming paradigm shift in the future of transportation.

About Udacity

Udacity is democratizing education to make it affordable and accessible for people around the world to get the jobs they want to improve their lives. Headquartered in Silicon Valley with operations in China, Germany, India, Brazil and the UK, Udacity provides online education to millions of students in collaboration with top industry leaders including Google, Facebook, AT&T, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, Mercedes, DiDi, and more. The company’s Nanodegree certification program, a credential built and backed by industry, is designed to give students the skills they need to be in demand for the global workforce. The company offers Nanodegree programs across a range of subjects including self-driving car engineering, virtual reality development, AI engineering, machine learning, web and mobile development, and data analytics. Udacity has recently secured a prestigious spot in the CNBC Disruptor 50 list.

For more information, go to in.udacity.com.

Udacity Opens Registration for Introduction to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree Program

Udacity, the Silicon Valley-based, life-long learning platform, has announced the launch of two new courses – Introduction to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree Program, and Flying Car Nanodegree Program – to push beyond the current generation of quadrotors and remote-controlled drones, and give students the skills to create autonomous flight vehicles that will be crucial to the transportation systems of the future.

The Flying Car Nanodegree Program will be introduced in the coming months, as Udacity builds up the curriculum for this course in collaboration with world-renowned experts in the aerospace industry, including Nicholas Roy (MIT Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Raffaelo D’Andrea (ETH Zurich Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control, Co-founder of Kiva Systems, now Amazon Robotics), Angela Schoellig (University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies) and Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun, well-known for his trailblazing work in the field of autonomy. This program will open in early 2018.

Speaking about the purpose and motivation behind the Flying Car Nanodegree Program, Sebastian Thrun, Founder, Udacity commented, “I envision a [future] where you hop in a thing, go in the air, and fly in a straight line. I envision a future where Amazon delivers my food in the air in five minutes. The air is so free of stuff and is so unused compared to the ground, it has to happen in my opinion.”

The Introduction to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree Program opens registrations today to anyone in the world with an internet connection, without application restrictions. The goal of this program is to bring the thrill of building self-driving cars to anyone with minimal programming experience, and to empower students to understand the essentials of programming a self-driving car: from machine learning to object-oriented programming to probabilistic robots. The only prerequisites are basic programming experience (for example, C++ or Python familiarity) and algebra. Students enrolling in this course will build projects and study topics including Bayesian Thinking, Matrices, C++ basics, Performance and Modeling, Algorithmic Thinking, and Machine Learning/Computer Vision. Students who complete this course will be eligible for automatic enrolment into Udacity’s job-ready, application-based Self Driving Car or Robotics Nanodegree Program.

Speaking about how participants will gain by taking these programs, Ishan Gupta, Managing Director (India) - Udacity commented, “Udacity has been working towards preparing the workforce for the Jobs of tomorrow with cutting-edge technologies in areas of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence among others. After our success with the full-fledged Self-Driving Car Nanodegree, we felt the need to expand our portfolio of courses to meet the demand for a larger base of engineers who can contribute to the emerging areas of automation and transportation. With our Flying Car Nanodegree Program and Intro to Self-Driving Cars Nanodegree Program, our goal is to teach a new generation of engineers the skills necessary to build this smart transportation of the future and contribute to the wave of automation everywhere.”

With the launch of the Introduction to Self-Driving Cars and the Flying Car Nanodegree Program, Udacity is expanding both its pool of potential students as well as embracing the coming paradigm shift in the future of transportation.

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