The "weather copter", a multi-rotor copter for weather-related research
Recent advancements in sensor technology and open-source electronics are allowing the low-cost development of unmanned aerial systems for studying atmospheric structure and dynamics. While previous emphasis has been on the development of fixed wing unmanned aircraft for atmospheric investigations, the use of multi-rotor copters is unexplored.
Our first goal was to build a multi-rotor copter that is capable of profiling temperature, humidity and wind in the lowest 100 meters of the atmosphere. In the summer of 2013, we started working on assembling a hexa-copter. The body of the copter is from a pre-designed kit sold online by Hobbyking. The Hexa-copter is powered by standard off the shelf batteries and motors from the R/C aircraft industry. The control system for the Hexa-copter is the open source Arducopter, run on an ArduPilotMega 2.7 auto pilot. We have equipped our hexa-copter with meteorological sensors connected to a BeagleBone and data are transmitted to a laptop on the ground. As of April 2014, we have accomplished this first goal. Our second goal will be to demonstrate the potential of these multi-rotor copters for investigating boundary layer structure and flow dynamics in an area of complex terrain.
At a poster to be presented at the 17th AMS Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, (https://ams.confex.com/ams/21Applied17SMOI/webprogram/Paper247550.html) , we hope to show some first results of a field experiment in which a hexa-copter measured vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, and winds in the lowest part of the atmospheric boundary layer autonomously