Go with the Flow II: Micro Aerial Vehicles as Active Particles in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Micro aerial vehicles have transformative potential in applications ranging from package delivery and infrastructure inspection to large-scale field measurement campaigns. Operating in the atmospheric boundary layer, these vehicles must be able to react to and navigate in constantly changing conditions. The prevailing approach is to sense and reject all disturbances from the desired condition. In this talk, we examine whether selective amplification of favorable disturbances can actually improve vehicle performance. Such improvements could mean improved vehicle range and endurance, or more efficient coverage of a desired measurement volume. This study is enabled by a suite of hardware and controller improvements to our LaDrone platform, including brushless motors, a disturbance-accepting controller, and an integrated antenna design.