Drones will soon fill our aerial ecosystem in the field imaging/cartography, parcel delivery and passenger transport. Drones will need to operate around the clock in arbitrary atmospheric conditions, especially in adverse weather conditions during emergency situations. In cities, they will be required to overcome urban canyon as well as road vehicle turbulence. At higher altitudes, winds can be unpredictable: drones are much smaller than conventional aircraft and are thus more sensitive to weather conditions.
We have submitted a proposal to the Federal office of civil aviation (FOCA) to develop drone certification protocols in a controlled environment, using a Simulator of Autonomous Flight Environments (SAFE) based on a multifan wind facility commercialized by a Swiss company, WindShape. The wind facility consists of an array of a large number of fans that may be arranged in various patterns on demand. SAFE will subject drones to winds of variable intensity and direction (as well as various weather conditions such as rain, snow, hail, fog etc.) that reflect real world situations. These tests would then rate drones according to their capacity in maintaining a proper flight attitude and tackling flight perturbations in an urban, countryside, or high altitude environment.
In order to achieve these goals, SAFE needs to replicate real environmental conditions. In this context, two key steps need to be undertaken:
To achieve these two steps, the objectives of this project are to measure meteorological flows in urban areas (EPFL) and to use Machine Learning tools (ETHZ) in order to train an instrument of Swiss invention, a pixelated wind tunnel (WindShape), to faithfully reproduce these conditions (HEPIA). The aim is to develop testing and certification environments for drones worldwide.
SAFE will be the first ever facility in the world to ensure drones airworthiness according to their capacity in staying aloft in given wind and weather conditions. The infrastructure (hardware), the flowfields (software), as well as the testing and certification procedure (processes) can then be commercialized worldwide, either as a service or as a franchise.
Project partner(s)
Project leader - team
Flavio Noca
(HEPIA)