Dronely: A Visual Block Programming Language for the Control of Drones

Abstract

Dronely is a visual block programming language that allows users to build programs for the control of small drones. Dronely uses drones as a way of raising interest in computer science among K-12 students by presenting a user-friendly and intuitive drag-and-drop interface for building programs that have a physically observable effect. Although the language was designed so that simple tasks are straightforward to accomplish, more complex programs can still be implemented in Dronely. In this paper, we introduce the language features provided in Dronely and outline the implementation details of using Blockly on an Android device.