Wind and Gust Sensing Requirements for Advanced Aerial Mobility Applications

The use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) as a tool for use in atmospheric observations for integration of urban air mobility (UAM) solutions as well as unmanned traffic management (UTM) system development and implementation. However, the challenges of urban wind field sensing include high spatial turbulence gradients, high turbulence magnitudes, and degraded position references, all of which complicate the traditional approach. Swarming and mesh network topologies are attractive for integrating additional sensing platforms into this measurement challenge. Since understanding these wind fields is still a topic of research, and this turbulence is a large component of the wind field being sensed, a detailed understanding of gust responses is necessary to provide accurate control. Inertial estimation approaches that incorporate observational measurements and errors to provide measurement of the local wind field will improve their estimation accuracy by incorporating mechanisms to modulate the sensitivity based on local wind magnitudes. This presentation discusses integration approaches and field tests for utilizing UAS to provide real-time data to enable UAM and UTM operations; improving the resolution and accuracy of comprehensive wind field estimation is critical to improve safety and operational efficiency.