Abstract
Obtaining thermodynamic measurements using rotary-wing unmanned aircraft systems (rwUAS) requires several considerations for mitigating biases from the aircraft and its environment. In this study, we focus on how the method of temperature sensor integration can impact the quality of its measurements. To minimize non-environmental heat sources and prevent any contamination coming from the rwUAS body, two configurations with different sensor placements are proposed for comparison. The first configuration consists of a custom quadcopter with temperature and humidity sensors placed below the propellers for aspiration. The second configuration incorporates the same quadcopter design with sensors instead shielded inside of an L-duct and aspirated by a ducted fan. Additionally, an autopilot algorithm was developed for these platforms to face them into the wind during flight for kinematic wind estimations. This study will utilize in situ rwUAS observations validated against tower-mounted reference instruments to examine how measurements are influenced both by the different configurations as well as the ambient environment. Results indicate that both methods of integration are valid but the below-propeller configuration is more susceptible to errors from solar radiation and heat from the body of the rwUAS.
Highlights
In the past 10–15 years, atmospheric scientists and engineers around the world have begun to address the shortage of planetary boundary layer (PBL) observations [1,2] by leveraging the rapid miniaturization of thermodynamic sensors and accessibility of open-source autopilot technologies to develop integrated unmanned aircraft systems (UAS, referred to as remotely piloted aircraft systems, RPAS) for atmospheric research (e.g., [3–13])
The entire distribution of mean of absolute differences (MD) during the Front Fan (FF) sensor calibrations lies below 0.09 ◦ C, with an interquartile range (IQR) of 0.06 ◦ C
95% of MDs during the calibration of the AP thermistors were below 0.12 ◦ C with an IQR of 0.05 ◦ C
Summary
Decades of advances in manned aircraft research have largely benefited the development of fixed-wing UAS (fwUAS) in particular (e.g., [14–16]), which has led to a focus on the use of fwUAS in the early years of atmospheric research with UAS [3–5,7,8,17]. Another advantage of fwUAS is their flight times, which are typically around an hour. Thermistors can be susceptible to self-heating when current is continually run through them and can build up heat This bias can be mitigated with proper ventilation across the sensor [27–29]
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