SBIR Phase II: High Resolution Environmental Sensing Using Nanodrones

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛/商业影响是能够将恶劣天气形成的预测提高到小时而不是天的时间分辨率。改进的天气预报对人们的生活有重大影响，可以更好地规划、主动疏散，减少死亡、受伤和财产损失，特别是在弱势群体中。随着气候学家预测未来几十年破坏性和危险的恶劣天气急剧增加，对恶劣天气的准确预测变得更加重要。该项目将围绕该技术开展机器人即服务业务，该技术可以迅速实现可持续性，产生经济影响，同时提供显著的环境、科学和社会效益。随着技术的成熟和普及，将围绕所产生的数据开发出全新的分析和预测模型，为保险、能源、金融和运输行业解锁更高价值的经济见解。从地面到3000英尺以上的大气部分被称为大气边界层。这个区域很难监测，但对地球和大气之间的气体、热量和能量交换有着巨大的影响。该项目有助于更好地监测和了解这一领域，推动科学、后勤和政策方面的进步，推动气候、环境和天气科学领域的创新，对人类产生重大影响。所提出的技术能够利用一群同步采样飞机收集高空间和时间分辨率的大气数据。蜂群系统将采用轻量化设计方法和专有优化技术，以实现便携性、蜂群能力、飞行耐力和低成本。利用自动化和机器人技术，包括远程操作支持，该项目将以可扩展和低成本的方式收集可能部署在全球的数据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is enabling enhanced prediction of severe weather formation to a timing resolution of hours instead of days. Improved weather predictions have a significant impact on people’s lives, allowing for better planning, proactive evacuations, and reducing deaths, injuries and property damage, especially in vulnerable populations. With climatologists predicting dramatic increases in damaging and dangerous severe weather over the next decades, accurate prediction of severe weather is even more critical. This project will launch a robotics-as-a-service business around the technology which can rapidly reach sustainability, generating economic impacts while providing significant environmental, scientific, and societal benefits. As the technology matures and becomes more widespread, entirely novel analysis and predictive models will be developed around the data being produced, unlocking even higher value economic insights for insurance, energy, financial, and transportation industries.The part of the atmosphere from the ground up to about 3,000 feet is called the atmospheric boundary layer. This area is difficult to monitor but has a huge impact on gas, heat, and energy exchange between the earth and the atmosphere. This project enables better monitoring and understanding of this area, unlocking scientific, logistical, and policy advancements that will drive new innovations in climate, environmental, and weather science with high impact on humanity. The proposed technology enables gathering high spatial and temporal resolution atmospheric data with a swarm of synchronized sampling aircrafts. The swarm system will use lightweight design approaches and proprietary optimization techniques for portability, swarm capability, flight endurance, and low cost. Using automation and robotics, including remote operational support, this project will enable data that can potentially be deployed globally to be gathered in a scalable and low-cost manner.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.