Decoding the Skies

OSU researchers’ UAV project may improve forecasts for severe weather

STORY BY MARKETA SOUCKOVA

PHOTO BY PHIL SHOCKLEY / UNIVERSITY MARKETING

As technology has improved, so has weather forecasting. But even today, tornado warnings give you a maximum of around 12 minutes to get to safety. If your shelter is elsewhere — say you’re at home but need to seek shelter in a basement at work — 12 minutes simply may not be enough time. But what if you had an hour’s notice to get to shelter?

A team of researchers from Oklahoma State University, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Nebraska and the University of Kentucky is working on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that will assist in increasing the warning time during severe weather.

OSU is leading this research; three schools or departments within OSU are collaborating: mechanical and aerospace engineering, computer science and geography. Professors leading the project are: Jamey Jacob, professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering Christopher Crick, assistant professor in computer science and Amy Frazier, assistant professor in geography.

“Being able to work with the professors has been great,” says Nicholas Foster, a mechanical and aerospace engineering sophomore. “It’s added that extra connection to the professors that you wouldn’t get in classrooms.”

A $6 million National Science Foundation grant provides the necessary resources for the researchers. As a leading university in the research, OSU gets one-third of the grant.

The goal is to develop the tools and capabilities to fly UAVs daily to get the data needed to improve forecasting methods. The project is scheduled to take about four years.

“Right now, what most researchers do to get data for forecast models or to get daily bulletins for weather is to fly balloons,” says Jacob. “They have very limited time, and they don’t really get a whole lot of data.”

In April, Jacob and OSU received the Federal Aviation Administration Section 333 exemption, allowing the legal flight of UAVs. Without the exemption, it is illegal to operate drones and UAVs commercially. Jacob requested to operate an unmanned aircraft system to conduct training courses and imagery of energy, infrastructure management, natural resource monitoring and management, precision agriculture and terrain modeling. OSU is one of 4,982 institutions that got the permission.

“This gives us the ability to fly the UAVs on a research basis,” says Jacob. “Until this time, we primarily had been working on systems and components inside the laboratory, but this gives us the opportunity to go outside and fly on a daily basis.”

Part of the research goal is to develop multiple similar UAVs that have the same function to sample the atmosphere to provide increased information about the atmosphere before a severe storm or any other weather condition. Researchers, including several students, work on

UAVs such as a rocket-sounding system and deployable wing unmanned aircraft or sonde equipped with a multi-rotor UAV platform.

“I have been working in Dr. Jacob’s lab for seven years, since I was a freshman,” says Shea Fehrenbach, mechanical and aerospace engineering graduate student.

“I have been conducting research in rocketry and deployable winged UAVs that would be beneficial for rapidly deploying them in severe conditions and would also be deployable from any location.”

By the time this research concludes, meteorologists should be able to collect data at lower altitudes that could provide insight into the formation of severe storms and allow for the creation of a three-dimensional weather forecast as opposed to two-dimensional forecasts, used extensively today.

Ultimately, the research could save lives. An hour should be time enough for people to get to a shelter before a tornado hits.