New tiny unmanned aircrafts to study hurricanes
In a move to learn more on Atlantic’s hurricanes, US scientists are exploring options to use swarms of unmanned, remote-controlled airplanes to penetrate the heart of giant storm.
The UAVs are from Aerosonde, Australia. In 2008, five of them would be launched National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The unmanned Aerosonde aircraft is worth between $50,000 and $80,000 and measures just 7-feet long. It has a 9-foot (2.7-metre) wingspan, and weighs 28 pounds (12.7 kg). These aircraft are smaller in size and powered by tiny 24 cc motor. With single propeller, it could fly at a speed of 113 km per hour and cover a wide area of 2,000 miles on a single fuel tank. This is less sophisticated than one used by US military in war zones. These Aerosondes could fly a few hundred feet above the ocean, where the critical energy transfer from sea surface to storm occurs.
A bunch of them would fly into the hurricane. They are resilient and don’t break easily. They can fly much lower than a manned hurricane hunter plane, and stay in the eye of the storm and relay data.
Researchers have manually controlled a bunch of UAVs from the ground before, but this plan might mean the first time UAVs would operate autonomously.
Their would be some control over the swarm from the ground. But each aircraft woul make its own specific decisions autonomously, independent of ground control. Each aircraft acts like a node in a network. It would transmit its co-ordinates and speed. It would send some navigation and data to other crafts, and receive some. They would all adjust their navigation accordingly.
These drones could fly into the eye of a storm just 300 feet above the sea surface and send back a constant stream of temperature, pressure, wind and humidity readings. According to Joe Cione, a research meteorologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are no other options to get these measurements.
Researchers have dabbled with drones before, starting with Tropical Storm Ophelia in 2005. An unmanned aircraft spent 17.5 hours aloft in a flight into Hurricane Noel last year. This year they are hoping for two to five flights. However for the time being these drones have to fly from the eastern Caribean Islands of Barbados as American aviation authorities have strict control on tiny aircrafts.
