Field report: Deployment of a fleet of drones for cloud exploration

Gautier Hattenberger (1) , Titouan Verdu (1) , Nicolas Maury (2) , Pierre Narvor (3) , Fleur Couvreux (2) , Murat Bronz (1) , Simon Lacroix (3) , Grègoire Cayez (4) , Gregory C Roberts (2, 5)

1 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
2 CNRM - Centre national de recherches météorologiques
3 LAAS-RIS - Équipe Robotique et InteractionS
4 ENM - Ecole Nationale de la Météorologie
5 SIO - UC San Diego - Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Drones are commonly used for civil applications and are accessible to those with limited piloting skills in several scenarios. However, the deployment of a fleet in the context of scientific research can lead to complex situations that require an important preparation in terms of logistics, permission to fly from authorities, and coordination during the flights. This paper is a field report of the flight campaign held at the Barbados Island as part of the NEPHELAE project. The main objectives were to fly into trade wind cumulus clouds to understand the microphysical processes involved in their evolution, as well as to provide a proof of concept of sensor-based adaptive navigation patterns to optimize the data collection. After introducing the flight strategy and context of operation, the main challenges and the solutions to address them will be presented, to conclude with the evaluation of some technical evolution developed from these experiments.

Mots clés: Autonomous navigation; adaptive trajectories; field experiment; environment exploration

Domaines: Systèmes embarqués; Robotique [cs.RO]; Automatique / Robotique

Gautier Hattenberger, Titouan Verdu, Nicolas Maury, Pierre Narvor, Fleur Couvreux, et al.. Field report: Deployment of a fleet of drones for cloud exploration. International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles, 2022, 14, pp.175682932110708. ⟨10.1177/17568293211070830⟩. ⟨hal-03520657⟩