From library cards to launch-ready: How Purdue University manages a fleet of research drones across three programs with Shelf

With Nathan Rose — Clinical Assistant Professor, School of Aviation and Transportation Technology (SATT), Purdue University.

At a glance

• 632 asset bookings in the first four months of use
• ~40 bookings per week across drones, sensors, and research equipment
• Nearly 100 team members across 3 independent Shelf workspaces
• Advance booking replaced a system that only allowed 24-hour holds
• Maintenance tracking and activity logging for FAA-regulated aircraft

About Purdue University

Purdue University is one of the country's leading research institutions, and its Polytechnic Institute and College of Agriculture are home to programs that put expensive, specialized equipment into students' hands every day.

Three programs at Purdue now use Shelf, each with different needs:

SATT (School of Aviation and Transportation Technology) operates a fleet of multi-rotor, fixed-wing, and research-grade remote sensing equipment for its Unmanned Aerial Systems degree program — with more than 80 team members using Shelf, from faculty to dispatchers to students. Students plan and fly research missions as part of their coursework, and dispatchers need to know exactly which aircraft are available, who's requesting them, and when.

AIDA3 uses Shelf primarily for long-term asset tracking and is building toward using the platform for cost tracking in the future.

Digital Forestry (Institute for Digital Forestry) runs a small, focused workspace where faculty and staff can self-checkout equipment for forest research, removing the need for a dedicated equipment manager and helping the team with asset planning and allocation across research sites.

The world before Shelf

Before Shelf, the team was using LibraryCat — a system originally built for managing book collections. It worked fine for books, but not for drones.

The backend was complicated in ways that didn't match the team's actual workflow, and it couldn't be properly managed by the entire team. Serial numbers had to be entered as ISBNs. And the most limiting constraint: students could only hold an asset for 24 hours, making it nearly impossible to plan multi-day research missions in advance.

Why Shelf

The team needed something that could handle the specifics of managing a drone fleet — not just checking items in and out, but tracking which aircraft have been used by whom, for which course, and when they need maintenance.

They chose Shelf for a few reasons:

A clean, manageable backend that the entire team could use — not just one administrator. That mattered: the SATT program alone now has more than 80 people in Shelf, from faculty and dispatchers to students on active research missions. Customizable text fields that could hold FAA registration stickers, links to external maintenance records, and form references. And most critically, the ability to book assets in advance, so students could plan missions days or weeks ahead of time.

"Shelf is a powerful Asset Manager that is both easy to use and powerful in functionality. The ease of use allows our entire team to help manage and maintain our assets, but the powerful functionality allows us to create a specific system to meet our needs."

— Nathan Rose, Clinical Assistant Professor, SATT — Purdue University

How they use it

The SATT program's most-checked-out assets tell the story — platforms like the DJI Matrice 300, Skydio 2+, and Skydio X10 account for the most-booked items, with individual aircraft seeing 8 to 13 checkouts in the tracking period.

The team relies on three features in particular:

Kits for checkout. Drones don't go out alone — they ship with associated gear. Checking out through kits means dispatchers can send a student out the door with everything they need in one step.

Maintenance checkout and activity logging. When an aircraft needs maintenance, it gets checked out accordingly. The activity log creates a paper trail for reporting — important when you're managing FAA-regulated equipment.

Adding and removing individual assets within a booking. Mission plans change. The team can adjust bookings on the fly without canceling and rebooking the entire reservation.

Dispatchers now have a real-time view of what's checked out, what's coming back, and what's been requested for upcoming missions. Students are encouraged to plan ahead — and for the first time, the system actually supports that.

"It allows dispatchers to remain more aware of current checkouts as well as be able to more easily see who is requesting what for when. Students are encouraged and enabled to plan missions in advance."

— Nathan Rose, Clinical Assistant Professor, SATT — Purdue University

The results

In the first four months, the SATT program alone logged 632 bookings — an average of about 158 per month and roughly 40 per week. September saw the highest volume at 289 bookings as the fall semester launched.

Beyond the numbers, Shelf has changed how the team operates — and scaled well beyond the initial setup. Since adopting Shelf in mid-2024, the program has grown to nearly 100 users across three independent workspaces, each tailored to a different program's workflow.

Aircraft usage is now tracked by person and by course, giving program administrators visibility into how equipment is being utilized across the curriculum. Maintenance records are connected to individual assets, creating a reporting trail that didn't exist before. And three distinct programs — each with their own workflows and asset types — are running independently on the same platform.

The Digital Forestry team set up self-checkout for faculty and staff, so they can reserve equipment without needing to go through a single point of contact. AIDA3 is using the platform for long-term asset tracking today and building toward cost tracking as a next step.

What they'd tell other programs

"Shelf has great documentation and any issues that are unresolved — we have had easy communication with the team in getting them resolved."

— Nathan Rose, Clinical Assistant Professor, SATT — Purdue University

Purdue University's School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, Institute for Digital Forestry, and AIDA3 research group use Shelf to manage drone fleets, sensor equipment, and research assets across multiple programs.