Weather Scout: Configurable Sensing in Urban, Suburban, and Rural Environments

The Weather Scout project will help to fill a significant gap in the current UAS ecosystem: sub-regional weather understanding aloft in urban, suburban, and rural environments. Flying Weather Scouts of mission-appropriate sizes/strengths mounted with mission-appropriate sensors (e.g., LIDAR, anemometer, EO/IR, etc.) will capture critical environmental data (e.g., winds, icing, visibility, etc.) to 1) provide real-time observations for UAS mission decision making, and 2) feed those observations into existing/emerging sub-regional weather models and machine learning (ML) to improve the accuracy of those models.  The Weather Testbed we develop to support Weather Scout will also be useful for vetting other Agility Prime platforms with respect to weather.