Multirotor Estimation of Wind

In the last decade both remotely-piloted and autonomous multirotor aerial systems have been employed for a wide range of challenging tasks, including visual inspection and physical maintenance, that were previously either dangerous or impractical.

Wide-spread adoption is, however, hindered by the sensitivity of existing systems to unpredictable disturbances caused by wind forces that they are not able to estimate and hence mitigate.

With funding provided by Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions programme, the MEW project seeks to use recently developed acoustic wind sensors in a sophisticated and mathematically sound estimation framework.

Researchers will design entirely new algorithms for the estimation of wind forces so that they may be compensated for by the multirotor flight control system.

Real-world tests and experiments will demonstrate the soundness of the research and lead to software implementations that are ready to be adopted by industry.

The results of the MEW project will lead to a new wave of application domains for multirotor technology, and will create new approaches to estimating wind dynamics that may extend to other engineering and scientific questions around fluid dynamics.