Drone Command:
Operation Uplink

Lesson Overview

The Drone Command – Operation Uplink skillmap introduces students to Artificial Intelligence–inspired decision-making through a fast, game-based coding experience. Students program their own underwater drone to collect data pods, evade enemy sonar buoys, and safely upload their findings to a Navy ship in a scrolling ocean arena.

They then build an AI advisor from if / else-if / else rules that read sensor numbers and recommend Collect, Upload, or Avoid. Optional levels let the advisor pilot the drone on autopilot, and students compare their Mission Reports to improve their rules. Students can choose sprites from a built-in gallery or draw their own pixel art. Made for grades 9–12, with no previous coding experience required.

How the Lesson Runs

1. Warm-Up: Heuristics~20 min

   Students play a partner game of Battleship and invent simple rules of thumb (heuristics) to search faster, then debrief which rules worked best. This sets up the idea behind the AI advisor they build later.

2. Prepare Your Drone~11 min

   Learn the MakeCode interface, build the ocean, create and move a drone sprite (pick one from the gallery or draw your own), and follow it with the camera.

3. Incoming Ship~13 min

   Create the Navy ship (choose a design or draw one), give it its own Ship kind (spelled with a capital S), build the randomness blocks that place it, and keep it safely on screen.

4. Enemy Waters~19 min

   Add data pods, roaming sonar buoys, and collision rules. Use a sonar pulse to disable buoys, and see why it also gives your position away. Choose or draw the data pods and the pulse picture.

5. Upload Complete~14 min

   Build the upload rule yourself: an event that fires when the drone touches the ship, adds the data it carries to the score, and empties the cargo. Then use if/else for a speed boost.

6. Build Your Advisor~12 min

   Build the advisor's 350 ms loop, then write the if / else-if / else rules that turn sensor readings into advice: Collect, Upload, or Avoid.

7. Certificate earnedafter level 5

   Students who finish the first five levels get their completion certificate, and are encouraged to keep coding with the optional levels.

8. Wrap-Up: AI Discussion~5–10 min

   Students compare their Mission Reports and talk through questions such as: Is this advisor really AI? When should a human take control back from the autopilot? How can we decide when to trust AI outputs, and how can we improve them? Students can also share a link to their game and playtest each other’s.

9. Fly With Your Advisor~9 minoptional

   Switch on the autopilot so the advisor pilots the drone (students steer by hand if it gets stuck), complete the mission, read the Mission Report, and tune the settings to beat it.

10. Challenge Lab10+ minoptional

    Pick a Bronze, Silver, or Gold challenge: tinker with the game, strategize against your own report, or engineer a smarter advisor. Students can also switch to new ocean maps, compare their Mission Reports, and teach their advisor to use the sonar pulse. At the end, students are pointed to Save to My Projects (every MakeCode block) and Share.

Also on the skillmap: The Finished Game, a stand-alone optional node in the top-right corner. Anyone can play the complete game with the AI advisor and autopilot, switch between four ocean maps (open water, shipwreck graveyard, caves, and currents), try the Bronze, Silver, and Gold challenges, or use it to model the activity before students begin.

Seven levels: five to the certificate, then two optional extensions. The warm-up and the wrap-up discussion happen away from the computer. Time estimates are approximate and come from the lesson length, so allow extra time for testing, debugging, and creative extensions.

Student Objectives

• Connect computer science concepts to real-world naval engineering contexts
• Design and test an AI-inspired heuristic system using simple decision rules
• Compare designs using data from a Mission Report
• Reflect on trade-offs between performance, safety, and data collection in autonomous systems
• Gain confidence in coding, debugging, and creative problem-solving

Coding Concepts

• Sprites, events (overlap), and variables
• Randomness and conditional logic (if / else-if / else)
• Sensor readings, thresholds, and comparing numbers
• Loops, collisions, and scoring systems
• Designing sprites with the pixel image editor
• Abstraction and modular code using custom blocks

Standards

STEM Careers

Students meet each of these Navy careers in a Career Spotlight pop-up as they play. Each photo is credited to its source in the pop-up (U.S. Navy, Navy.com, and DVIDS imagery).