Go with the Flow: Estimating Wind Using Uncrewed Aircraft

Abstract

This paper presents a fundamentally different approach to wind estimation using Uncrewed Aircraft (UA) than the vast majority of existing methods. This method uses no on-board flow sensor and does not attempt to estimate thrust or drag forces. Using only GPS and orientation sensors, the strategy estimates wind vectors in an Earth-fixed frame during turning maneuvers. The method presented here is called the Wind-Arc method. The philosophy behind this method has been seen in practice, but this paper presents an alternative derivation with resulting performance evaluations in simulations and flight tests. The simulations verify the method provides perfect performance under ideal conditions using simulated GPS, heading angle, and satisfied assumptions. When applied to experimental flight test data, the method works and follows both the airspeed and wind speed trends, but improvements can still be made. Wind triangles are displayed at each instant in time along the flight path that illustrate the graphical nature of the approach and solution. Future work will include wind gust estimation and a Quality of Estimate (QoE) metric to determine what conditions provide good wind speed estimates while preserving the method’s generality and simplicity.

Keywords

• wind estimation
• no-flow sensor
• wind measurement
• sensorless
• instrumented UA
• vehicle-as-a-sensor