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BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena

Adverse weather mission planning for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)

Alternative title: Ruteplanlegging for ubemannede fly under krevende værforhold

Awarded: NOK 14.9 mill.

Considering global urbanisation, overloaded road infrastructure, and the constantly increasing need for transport of goods and people, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) constitute a future-proof alternative. UAVs can relieve the current infrastructure and enable efficient transport of goods (and eventually people) with fewer energy requirements and environmental impact. For emergency response, search and rescue, UAVs have already proven their worthiness, and the use of UAVs for both ideal and commercial purposes is expected to radically grow over the next few years. A key challenge for UAVs is related to severe weather conditions. The largest weather-related market constriction for the UAV business is in-flight icing as the risks incurred by flying into icing conditions are very high and can potentially lead to loss of aircraft. Current mitigation strategies focus on delaying or canceling operations. Unavoidably, this limitation for UAV operation can be critical, i.e. if a rescue mission must be aborted due to icing conditions. Automated mission planning and pathfinding is a crucial requirement to ensure the autonomy of UAVs. Today?s flight planning tools for UAVs are limited to following waypoints and avoid collisions with terrain and obstacles as well as weather forecasts with some hours of precision. To unlock the full potential of UAVs, future path planning algorithms need to account for potential icing conditions and adverse weather conditions. As a response to this major challenge, the current project has started the development of an extended adverse weather mission planning tool to enable the planning and accomplishment of flights under icing conditions. Based on historical and real-time meteorological forecast data, advanced algorithms, and models, a prototype planning tool will be developed. The first framework for the forecast models is being developed as well as studies of relevant weather data sources and selected geographical areas for analyses. The first comparison studies between weather forecasts and data collected during flights will be prepared after flight tests in December 2021. The pathplanning tool completes the UBIQ Aerospace D*ICE solution by offering the ability to plan optimal flight paths under adverse conditions and autonomously detect, remove and verify the removal of ice that has accreted on the UAV.

This project proposes research to enable extended mission planning for UAVs in adverse weather conditions, like atmospheric icing and high winds. The outcome will be a UAV mission planning tool that considers meteorological data. The tool will be based on advanced algorithms taking historical and forecast meteorological data into account as well as the aircraft performance models and is a key component to a holistic ice protection solution that will be offered to the UAV industry. Development of technology that mitigates the icing hazard is the core vision for UBIQ Aerospace. Since 2017, the company has in close cooperation with NTNU, FFI, US Coastguard, NASA, US Airforce and major UAV industry companies developed a generic system for UAV inflight icing detection and de-icing called D•ICE. This technology will strengthen the abilities of UAVs to fly under challenging weather conditions. A recently assigned project with the Norwegian Ministry of Defence will ensure the final phases of development and industrialisation for the icing detection and de-icing technology over the next 2 year

Funding scheme:

BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena