Atmospheric Icing Sensor and Avoidance System for UAVs

Significant improvements in remote sensing technologies for icing weather avoidance is required to increase the level of safety for UAVs flying in the atmospheric icing environment. New developments in Multi Frequency Radar (MFR) and low-frequency Polarimetry show promise to provide onboard icing hazard information, however solutions may be heavy for application to small unmanned aircraft. Recent icing tunnel and flight testing at IDI has demonstrated the capability to obtain important cloud properties information, including icing potential and SLD droplets, using light weight inexpensive optical sensors and laser Range Finder techniques. During the Phase1 program IDI proposes to evaluate a Nephelometric Cloud Assessment System that weighs less than 1 lbs, provides distance to cloud ranging, as well as providing in situ measurement of LWC and SLD droplet sizes. The overall Multi-Phase SBIR goal is the development of a complete Icing Avoidance System architecture for UAV icing avoidance using light weight IR sensors fused with information available from the aircraft flight control system. The probe will be tested in both the icing tunnel environment and on an aircraft flight test bed to determine its sensitivity to new Super-Cooled large Droplet (SLD) icing conditions as defined in FAA Part 25 Appendix C/O.