Leosphere, UAV innovation projects
Presentation title: The Importance of Microscale Wind variability to UAV activities
Microscale Wind variability impacts not only the flight dynamics of a drone but the whole UAV eco-system itself. For example, the wear and tear of motors induced due to consistently flying through rough turbulent environments can severely deteriorate the drone’s reliability statistics and complicate maintenance operations. Or by simply flying at altitudes with strong headwinds, a UAV’s flight range can be substantially reduced, thus impacting recharging infrastructure, and market reach in case of drone deliveries! Current wind modeling and forecasts are based on ground based spatially sparse measurements or large-scale NWP. Existing technologies cannot give accurate real time wind data at every 50 m. Thus, losing out some very important information that is relevant to UAV operations, such as accurate wind shear, microburst and highly turbulent areas identification.
Darshan Sathiyanarayanan oversees UAV innovation projects at Leosphere, a Vaisala company.
Darshan Sathiyanarayanan is a R&D scientist in Leosphere’s wind Lidar data processing team. Darshan’s main focus is to value the high potential of the powerful Doppler wind Lidar technology to the improve safety of the UAV industry. He holds an M.Sc. in Fluid Dynamics and is actively exploring the problems he can tackle to help accelerate the advent of UAV’s. Aside Darshan’s data processing development activities, he also coordinates several experimental pilot projects aiming at demonstrating the Doppler wind Lidar’s potential to the UAV industry.
Leosphere, founded in 2004, is the world leader in ground-based and wind turbine-nacelle mounted Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) equipment for atmospheric observation. The company designs, develops, manufactures, sells and services turnkey remote-sensing instruments for wind measurement and aerosol characterization.
Vaisala is a global leader in environmental and industrial measurement. Building on over 80 years of experience, Vaisala contributes to a better quality of life by providing a comprehensive range of innovative observation and measurement products and services for chosen weather-related and industrial markets.
Vaisala is member of the Global UTM Association.