By integrating AI-powered prompts with drones, we can make drone programming accessible to everyone, transforming drones into intelligent, interactive devices.

Introduction

Autonomous drones have long been essential in industries like photography, surveillance, and delivery. However, programming them has typically required specialized knowledge. What if you could program a drone using plain English? This weekend, I explored this idea by connecting a DJI Tello drone with the Anthropic API (Claude AI). The result? A drone that can interpret prompts, solve math problems, and respond with physical actions—all without intricate coding.

Now, imagine a drone that can follow you around, assist with tasks, or serve as an engaging learning toy. By democratizing drone programming, we're unlocking endless possibilities for innovation and creativity. Before we go on to details here’s a video of what I ended up building -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--os4RgfPtE&ab_channel=ChinmayJoshi

The Vision: Drones That Understand and Act

Traditional drone programming involves writing specific code for each action. With AI-powered prompts, we can simplify this process dramatically. Instead of coding every maneuver, we use natural language to instruct the drone. The AI model interprets these instructions, reasons about them, and translates them into actions.

Example Scenario: Solving Math Problems

• Visual Input: Show the drone an image of a math problem, like "2 + 3".
• AI Interpretation: The drone's camera captures the image, and the AI model analyzes it to solve the problem.
• Physical Response: Based on the solution (5 in this case), the drone performs five flips, alternating between forward and backward.

This approach transforms drones from remote-controlled devices into intelligent agents capable of understanding and interacting with their environment.

Challenges Faced

Connecting to the Drone and Internet Simultaneously

• Encoding images into a format suitable for the AI model.

One significant hurdle was connecting my Mac to both the drone and the internet at the same time. The DJI Tello creates its own Wi-Fi network, and connecting to it usually disconnects you from the internet—a problem when you need to access cloud-based AI models.

Solution: I used an Ethernet cable for internet access, allowing the Mac to stay connected online while interfacing with the drone's Wi-Fi network.

Integrating the Anthropic API with Real-Time Drone Control

Ensuring seamless communication between the drone and the AI model involved: