Accurate Wind Observation and Robust Control for Drones in the Field of Micro-meteorology⋆

Abstract

Urban logistics has been the primary target for recent drone applications. However, these drones face varying weather conditions in their flight horizon that can limit their performance. From another perspective, this flight horizon is the focus of micro-meteorology data gathering for a city-wide accurate weather prediction system. Hence, these drones can carry out logistics while gathering micro-meteorology data. This paper focuses on the latter and aims to realize the drone capabilities required for forecasting micro-meteorology, especially observing highly accurate wind data and robust control capability against strong wind disturbances. The generation of wind maps using a 2D wind sensor mounted on a drone and wind gust estimation using a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDOB) are proposed as the capability for accurate wind observation. Next, the position and velocity control of the drone using super twisting sliding mode control (STSMC) and NDOB are designed for robust control. Lastly, numerical simulation and real-world experiments verify the effectiveness of the whole system proposed in this paper.