Low-Cost, Dual-Use Platforms for Environmental Sensing. Phase 1

摘要

Recent advances in microelectronics, lightweight composite structures andcomputational fluid mechanics have made possible a new generation of semiautonomous, unmanned aircraft. Many of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were originally conceived for purely military purposes, but the performance capabilities--in particular, the capacity for flights of extended range and endurance--have attracted the attention of the atmospheric and environmental research communities. While the application of UAVs to high-altitude research has been extensively investigated and documented, much less attention has been given to their potential role in low-altitude atmospheric studies. This report focuses on the application of unmanned aircraft to environmental sensing at low altitudes in the marine environment. There appear to be a number of missions in which a suitable UAV platform could provide unique opportunities for data collection that would greatly expand the current understanding of this vital region of the atmosphere. In addition to scientific contributions, the information collected at low altitude would be also be of significant interest to the U.S. Navy for purposes varying from calibration of weapons guidance systems to initialization of computational models.