SGER: Formation Flying of Rapidly Deployable Remotely Piloted Vehicles for Mesoscale Meteorological Observations

事实证明，地面移动的观测设施在研究龙卷风和阵风锋等瞬变大气现象方面具有重要价值。 根据这项探索性研究的小额赠款，主要研究者将开始开发一种小型的空中遥控飞行器。 这些平台将设计成从地面移动的设施迅速发射。 最终目标是研制一架由地面控制的指挥机，以及几架伴随飞机，这些飞机将与指挥机保持预先编程的固定方向。 每架飞机将携带测量温度、压力和相对湿度的仪器。 这项拨款的工作是开发控制指挥部和一架额外的“从属”飞机的软件。 如果这项研究成功，最终开发出这样一个测量系统将有助于将地面观测扩展到垂直层面，并使目前不可能进行的诊断研究成为可能。

Ground-based mobile observational facilities have proven to be of great value in studying transient atmospheric phenomena such as tornadoes and gust fronts. Under this Small Grant for Exploratory Research, the Principal Investigator will begin development of a small, airborne, remotely piloted vehicle. These platforms will be designed to be launched rapidly from ground based mobile facilities. The ultimate objective is to develop a command aircraft, which will be controlled from the ground, and several accompanying aircraft that will maintain a preprogrammed, fixed orientation to the command aircraft. Each aircraft will carry instruments to measure temperature, pressure and relative humidity. The work under this grant is to develop the software that will control the command and one additional "slave" aircraft. If this research is successful, eventual development of such a measurement system will help extend ground-based observations into the vertical dimension and allow diagnostic studies that are not currently possible.