This article presents a full course for autonomous aerial robotics inside the RoboticsAcademy framework. This “drone programming” course is open-access and ready-to-use for any teacher/student to teach/learn drone programming with it for free. The students may program diverse drones on their computers without a physical presence in this course. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) applications are essentially practical, as their intelligence resides in the software part. Therefore, the proposed course emphasizes drone programming through practical learning. It comprises a collection of exercises resembling drone applications in real life, such as following a road, visual landing, and people search and rescue, including their corresponding background theory. The course has been successfully taught for five years to students from several university engineering degrees. Some exercises from the course have also been validated in three aerial robotics competitions, including an international one. RoboticsAcademy is also briefly presented in the paper. It is an open framework for distance robotics learning in engineering degrees. It has been designed as a practical complement to the typical online videos of massive open online courses (MOOCs). Its educational contents are built upon robot operating system (ROS) middleware (de facto standard in robot programming), the powerful 3D Gazebo simulator, and the widely used Python programming language. Additionally, RoboticsAcademy is a suitable tool for gamified learning and online robotics competitions, as it includes several competitive exercises and automatic assessment tools.

BiSKY Team is an aerospace-focused student group from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, Bilbao, Spain) where it is a recognized teaching project. It was born in 2018 and its main activities deal with the development of the technologies involved in the design, manufacture and launch of suborbital rockets. This team is currently the only Spanish university team involved in the research and construction of hybrid engine rockets. The primary objective of the team is to enable young science and engineering students to acquire expertise in the aerospace field, and several transversal skills as well, by designing and constructing space vehicles. Further purposes include promoting science and engineering among high school students and children and to also reduce the existing disparity between male and female involvement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Besides, the project will make interesting contributions to space science by providing researchers with the means to test their experiments in zero gravity and high-altitude vacuum.BiSKY Team is divided into several specialized groups: i) Aerodynamics and Recovery, ii) Propulsion, iii) Avionics, iv) Flight Control and Simulation, v) Business and Management and vi) Structure. This interdisciplinary project makes the collaboration among all groups crucial. In this regard, the team stands for respectful cooperation between all its students. BiSKY Team is an example of a multidisciplinary student project that implements innovative technologies allowing not only its members, but also members of other student research groups and training centres, to enter the competitive sector of aerospace engineering and space science research. Even if this is a university studentdeveloped and managed project, vocational training schools' involvement is also considered. Close contacts with research and technological institutions as well as industrial companies are pursued looking for technical advice and financial support.Within the operations of the team, several phases are being undertaken in order to acquire the expertise necessary to design, manufacture and launch a hybrid engine rocket that reaches an altitude of 100 kilometres, also acknowledged as the Karman Line. The phases include the development of two engine test stands, a flight simulator and the complete avionics for the rockets and test stands. The expertise gained through the implementation of the mentioned technology is being applied in the hybrid engine rockets of the so-called Cosmox family, whose primary mission is to reach space and allow the research experiments to be carried out. The design of the Cosmox and future families of rockets is iterative, giving continuity to the project by allowing next generations students to get involved.