Wind Speed and Direction Detection by Means of Solid state Anemometers Embedded on Small Quadcopters
This work describes the application of a compact, MEMS based, 2D anemometer to the estimation of a quadrotor's airspeed. Correcting for the vehicle's ground speed provided by internal GPS and inertial units allows this low cost, mobile platform to provide local wind speed estimates. A series of initial, bench top tests were performed to characterize and calibrate the sensor, which is an improved version of a recently proposed and novel device. Additional full scale wind tunnel experiments were performed with the sensor mounted on a fixed quadrotor to test the effect of the propellers on the sensor's performance. (c) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the 30th Eurosensors Conference.