RII Track-2 FEC: Unmanned Aircraft System for Atmospheric Physics

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Non-technical descriptionThis Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-2 Focused EPSCoR* Collaboration (RII Track-2 FEC) involves researchers from three jurisdictions: Oklahoma (OK), Nebraska (NE), and Kentucky (KY). The research team will study atmospheric physics using small unmanned airborne systems (UAS). Oklahoma State University, the project lead, is collaborating with the University of Oklahoma, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Kentucky. The interdisciplinary project team includes researchers with expertise in robotics, autonomous control, unmanned aircraft systems, atmospheric physics, and numerical weather prediction. Education, outreach, and workforce development activities include public education about UAS technology and its policy implications, educational workshops on locally specific applications of UAS technology, and rapid dissemination tools for communicating and responding to severe weather threats and hazards. The project will support interdisciplinary collaborations among early career faculty in the three jurisdictions. Technical descriptionThis RII Track-2 FEC collaborative research team will develop and test easily-deployable UAS-based remote sensing systems to characterize the Earth?s lower atmospheric boundary layer. Research topics include meteorological convection, storm-scale microphysics, airborne sensing of soil hydrology, infrasonic sensing of environmental phenomena, and local-scale temporal and spatial climate variation. The research team will also investigate cooperative control of UAS formations, spatially distributed data from moving sensor platforms, and heterogeneous autonomous systems. Expected outcomes from this project include complete UAS system packages suitable for measuring wind, atmospheric chemistry, soil moisture, and thermodynamic parameters. *Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research