Imagine a World - Run by Drone Deliveries

created by David Berger & Alexandr Sychev, at the Lev Academic Institute (Jerusalem College of Technology)

This Program allows customers and employees to send parcels to different locations (with Drones). Users can track the Drone's locations, battery life (which decreases with distance traveled and weight of the parcel), send Drones to charge at stations. Employee can view a customer and see which of his parcels were delivered/received, and add or delete Parcels, Stations, Drones, and Customers. Program supports the User viewed previously deleted objects in lists. There is a login window, which opens different parts of the program whether the user is an employee or customer. The Program has a Simulator which runs the drones to pick up parcels, based on a few different algorithms (which make sure that no drone runs out of battery on the way). We developed our Program with very clear and understandable architecture, and a Programmer can easily add many features.

What we learned from this project:

We implemented a 3-Layered model (Data, Logic, Presentation), with appropriate interfaces, exceptions and software design. The data itself is saved in XML docs (serialized by simple LINQ - see “stations”), and the data interface is protected by a simple Singleton (and Factory) pattern.
The Logic layer runs multiple Threads simoultaneously (during ‘simulation’), protecting and locking critical sections, and computes battery life of drones and realistic longitude and latitude of customers and stations (using Haversine’s formula for distance).
This was our first GUI project, without any framework, building everything from scratch - we learned about EventHandlers, Data Binding, Progress updates, etc.
We learned to use Git (via GitHub)- coordinating commits and merges effectively, managing different branches and tags.

We developed a system (without a framework) to allow a company to track delivery of parcels from different customers, using drones.

There are four main objects held in The Data Library:

• Drones,
• Stations (to charge the drones),
• Customers,
• Parcels.

Directions to view the project easily:

• simply download the source code and run with any C# IDE (no special technology or dependency required). We use Visual Studio
• Click on “Default Login”

• Open the Map Window, and click “Start Simulator”. Watch the drones deliver the parcels.

• Click "Show TextBlock View"
  Blue boxes are customers - with the number of parcels waiting to be delivered
  Green boxes are stations - with the number of drones charging there
  Red boxes are drones - a 1 if they're carrying a parcel, and 0 if they're not carrying a parcel

• You can view each object in their window -> Open their list from the MainWindow and double click on an item.

• To manually deliver parcels (instead of the Simulator), open an individual drone window.

Enjoy!

A bit about the back code:

Data Layer (DL) - safely stores the objects in an XML file. Protects the data with a Singleton design pattern (Lazy Instantiation) and very simple Factory class.

Business Logic Layer (BL) - Accesses the Data Layer with a variable called “dataAccess”. This layer sifts thru the data to bring relevant objects, calculates some details... This layer saves almost no data between calculations... the BO (Business Objects) are discarded after creation (except for BODrone)

Presentation Layer (PL) - Accesses BL with “busiAccess”. Refreshes the GUI regularly with updated data.