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Weather station with uav's

Posted by Russell B. Sutton on April 30, 2011 at 12:23pm

   I was wondering if anyone had thought about incorporating a ground weather station to help control UAV's. You could use wind speeds and wind directions to help navigate the aircraft more accurately. The barometric pressure sensor @ the weather station could be compared with the barometric pressure on board the aircraft to determine better altittude during weather changes. If you are into FPV flying you could add a wind indicator to the onscreen display to help identify witch direction the wind was blowing at you from at all times while in flight. A weather station could be used to warn yourself of changing weather conditions in real time.

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Replies

  • Developer
    Doug Weibel May 1, 2011 at 4:28pm
    Sorry, I misinterpreted (or insufficiently thought about) the baro part. Yes, a ground based baro could increase the accuracy of the altitude estimate. It would require that APM record both its ground pressure measurement and the weather station's ground pressure measurement before the flight. The difference between what we do and using ATIS to correct an altimeter is that the altimeter is calibrated so that if you dial in a ground pressure you get the correct altitude. We don't have that sort of calibration, but could rely on the change in ground pressure to correct for ambient pressure changes.

    As far as wind speed, Russell you should know that you wouldn't use the ATIS wind for an estimate of winds aloft ;)
    Changes.as is coming soon
  • Sebastian Gralla May 1, 2011 at 1:36pm

    some UAV systems estimate current wind speed and direction with gps and accelerometer sensors, i think it should be more accurate than ground based wind estimations by wheather stations

  • Developer
    Doug Weibel April 30, 2011 at 5:13pm
    Russell, you cannot compare barometric pressure on the ground and in the air without an independent altitude reference. We are getting more accurate results from the barometric altitude calculation than gps, so trying to correct the barometric calculation with gps altitude would make it worse.

    Also, for most geographic areas (eg unless you happen to be on a coastline) there is often a substantial difference between the wind speed and direction on the ground and just a short distance above ground.
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