Flight patterns for clouds exploration with a fleet of UAVs

Titouan Verdu (1, 2) , Gautier Hattenberger (1) , Simon Lacroix (2)

1 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
2 LAAS-RIS - Équipe Robotique et InteractionS

Modeling the cloud microphysics processes is essential to improve our understanding in climate changes and reduce the uncertainties in weather predictions. Aircrafts, remote sensing and ground-based infrastructures provide either sparse or coarse spatial measurements that are not sufficient to develop fine cloud models. UAVs have shown their ability to collect relevant cloud in-situ measures, and can be even more efficient when deployed in fleets. However, collecting relevant cloud data call for specific trajectories: this paper introduces a series of flight patterns dedicated to cloud exploration by a fleet of UAVs. The patterns definition comprise both a priori geometric information and real-time reactions to collected data. Results in simulated clouds assess their relevance for cloud in situ data collection.

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Automatique / Robotique

Titouan Verdu, Gautier Hattenberger, Simon Lacroix. Flight patterns for clouds exploration with a fleet of UAVs. ICUAS 2019, 2019 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Jul 2019, Atlanta, United States. pp.ISBN: 978-1-7281-0334-1, ⟨10.1109/ICUAS.2019.8797953⟩. ⟨hal-02137839⟩