The 16.85 Autonomy Capstone course at MIT immerses students in developing autonomous flight software for drones capable of navigating complex, unfamiliar, and uncertain environments such as planetary surfaces. Emphasis is placed on integrating perception, planning, and control systems that can recover from faults.
This hands-on educational program extends prior robotics coursework by tasking students to build navigation architectures and test them on obstacle courses with challenging landing zones. The course simulates real-world aerospace complexity but operates in a controlled academic setting, supporting broad applications from urban air mobility to space exploration.
Source & further reading
Engineering confidence to navigate uncertainty ↗Source published 2026-03-02. This report was prepared with AI assistance from the linked primary-source material. Claims and limitations should be checked against the original announcement or research.