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Collaborative Colorado-Nebraska Unmanned Aircraft System Experiment

Links

  NSF Abstract
  Flight Data

Platform

  NexSTAR UAS

Flight Testing

See the RECUV channel on YouTube for videos of our flights.

Flight Objective Log
17 Sep 2008 NexSTAR-1 PTH Sensor Testing using NCAR MIST sondes in each wing tip
01 Mar 2009 Sonde flight at Pawnee National Grasslands for the CoCoNUE experiments
10 Sep 2009 Communications range test at Pawnee National Grasslands
24 Sep 2009 Communications range test, attempt to correlate flight data with doppler radar
30 Sep 2009 Attempt to sample boundary layers

Project Overview

The objective of this collaborative project between the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln has been to examine the feasibility of using a small unmanned aircraft (UA) operating semi-autonomously to observe atmospheric phenomena within the planetary boundary layer of the national airspace system over land. To achieve this objective, a field experiment has been designed that will utilize a UA developed by the University of Colorado's Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) to collect in situ data across airmass boundaries located over the Pawnee National Grassland in northeast Colorado. The specific objectives of this experiment (CoCoNUE, Collaborative Colorado-Nebraska Unmanned Aircraft System Experiment) are as follows:

  • Demonstrate the targeting of a mesoscale atmospheric phenomenon that has been identified with supplemental observing platforms
  • Examine flight strategies for sampling airmass boundaries with unmanned aircraft
  • Test the rapid deployment of an unmanned aircraft system

    Participants

    Brian Argrow (PI) and Jack Elston

    University of Colorado at Boulder (CU)

    Dr. Argrow and his staff at RECUV have taken a leading role in the following areas: 1) developing and maintaining an open line of communication with FAA for the purpose of clarifying and integrating FAA regulations, 2) constructing the UA that will be used for CoCoNUE, and 3) developing the command and control system for the UA.

    Adam Houston (co-PI) and Jamie Lahowetz

    University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL)

    Dr. Houston and his group have taken a leading role in the following areas: 1) developing a decision support system that enables the navigation of the UA and ground-based support vehicles in relationship to an observed airmass boundary and 2) crafting the overall strategy to target airmass boundaries.

    Patrick Kennedy

    Colorado State University (CSU)

    CSU operates the NSF-supported CSU-CHILL and CSU-Pawnee radars located in northeast Colorado. These radars will be instrumental in the execution of CoCoNUE:

  • Real-time radar data will be used to target airmass boundaries over the Pawnee National Grassland
  • Archived radar data will be synthesized to yield three-dimensional wind measurements that can be compared to the observations collected by the UA.

    Support from the CSU-CHILL/Pawnee radars was awarded to the PIs by the NSF Observing Facilities Advisory Panel. The CSU staff responsible for operating the radars have 1) worked to convert the radar data into a format compliant with the decision support tool developed for the project, 2) consulted with the PIs to craft a radar sampling strategy, and 3) provided equipment that will be used for in-the-field communication between project personnel and between the project coordinators and the radar operators.

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