Wind Speed and Direction Detection by Means of Solid-state Anemometers Embedded on Small Quadcopters

This work describes the application of a compact, MEMS-based, 2D anemometer to the estimation of a quadrotor's airspeed. Correcting for the vehicle's ground speed provided by internal GPS and inertial units allows this low cost, mobile platform to provide local wind speed estimates. A seri...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bruschi, P., Piotto, M., Dell’Agnello, F., Ware, John W., Roy, Nicholas
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/114647
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5867-4900
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8293-0492
Description
Summary:This work describes the application of a compact, MEMS-based, 2D anemometer to the estimation of a quadrotor's airspeed. Correcting for the vehicle's ground speed provided by internal GPS and inertial units allows this low cost, mobile platform to provide local wind speed estimates. A series of initial, bench-top tests were performed to characterize and calibrate the sensor, which is an improved version of a recently proposed and novel device. Additional full-scale wind tunnel experiments were performed with the sensor mounted on a fixed quadrotor to test the effect of the propellers on the sensor's performance. Keywords: wind sensor; quadcopter; MEMS; UAV