Urban Air Mobility Wind Collection: collecting wind and atmospheric data to improve safety and efficiency of low-altitude UAS operations, specifically in urban environments.

UAS technologies are becoming more widely utilized in civil and commercial fields and military applications. Amazon's drone delivery service and Boeing's eVTOL air taxi are some examples of this. With small urban UAS applications becoming common, infrastructure, such as UAS traffic management for low-altitude airspace management and monitoring, is being developed. Safety and efficiency of UAS operations are strongly impacted by low-altitude wind, such as gusts around buildings. Gusts can negatively affect pilot operations, reduce flight time, and cause damage to the UAS system. For this project, a fleet of specialized UAS quadrotors will collect local wind data around buildings and urban environments and transmit the data in real time to ground stations in said urban environment to help in creating a real-time suggested flight path. Wind measurements will be taken around buildings on the Oklahoma State University campus, specifically the Kerr-Drummond buildings and Boone Pickens Stadium. One UAS quadrotor with a Trisonica Ultrasonic Anemometer to measure wind speed and direction was utilized in initial testing phases around such urban environments. Once wind data can be accurately and quickly collected around urban environments, more UAS systems with the data collection technology will be built and implemented. After several UAS systems can capture wind speed in multiple locations, a system will be built to send the wind data from the UAS quadrotors to a ground station in real-time.