Optimizing the use of atmospheric energy to extend range and endurance of low altitude UAVs and small manned aircraft

The overall objective of the proposed Phase I effort is to thoroughly document the technical feasibility of a platform independent hardware/software system that combines the real-time acquisition of atmospheric data by a small light-weight airborne Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) with a numerical model and additional atmospheric sensors to provide autonomous in-flight guidance and flight path planning for small manned aircraft or UAVs. The feasibility and advantages will be determined through analysis and computer simulations. The optimum or reasonable mixes of hardware, lidar, additional sensors and aircraft twill be identified and along with consequential impacts to the core feature detection and flight path planning and software. This information will be further used to guide us in the complete lidar-centric system design during Phase II. Through analysis of archived DWL data, we will also certify the use of airborne DWL data for atmospheric energy feature detection, as well quantifying, through simulation, the advantages of having a DWL onboard compared to using only in-situ sensors and probabilistic energy harvesting strategies.