COSMOS: Cameras for Observing Severe Meteorological Overt Situations

This proposal, ôCameras for Observing Severe Meteorological Overt Situations (COSMOS)ö, adds meteorological vision and AI capabilities to GreenSightĺs WeatherHive nano SUAS swarm system. WeatherHive is a novel system to directly sample the atmosphere using high performance, long range nano-sizes SUAS. This system is capable of autonomously gathering spatially and temporarily diverse data over a 200 square kilometer area at altitudes up to 5 km in a single flight. WeatherHive aircraft launch from a self contained unattended hive. COSMOSáenhances this system with new capabilities for cloud and storm imaging. The system expands current WeatherHive capabilities by enabling detection of weather phenomena far upwind (10s of km) and in severe conditions where in-situ measurements are not possible. COSMOS detects USAF and USSF mission hazards such as thunderstorms, cloud icing threats, and dust storms using a machine learning model and transfer learning for specific end-user missions. Sky cameras provide quick glance situational awareness of detected hazards. Quantitatively they provide cloud and storm structure and motion but qualitatively they also provide cloud type which indicates underlying weather conditions and icing threat.