NSF awards $6 million to OSU-led collaboration to develop weather research UAVs
The National Science Foundation has awarded Oklahoma State University and three partner universities $6 million to collaboratively develop an integrated unmanned aircraft system (UAS) to improve weather forecasting through the study of atmospheric physics. The four-year grant will support the collaboration led by OSU and including the universities of Oklahoma, Nebraska and Kentucky.
The project’s goal is the development of small, affordable unmanned systems, along with a knowledge base, to be used by government and university scientists and private companies to expand the understanding of atmospheric conditions and improve weather forecasting.
“Use of unmanned aircraft will eventually be a common tool in both meteorology and atmospheric physics, but there is a lot of research that needs to be accomplished first in technical, operational and regulatory areas for that to happen,” said Jamey Jacob, the project’s principal investigator and the Ray and Linda Booker Professor of Aerospace Engineering in OSU’s College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology (CEAT).
“The NSF grant solidifies the OSU College of Engineering’s impact on the UAV industry,” said CEAT Dean Paul Tikalsky. “This is a transformative project that highlights our program’s success and innovation in the field and one that will create significant change for the future of UAV use.”
No other research using UAVs to study weather is in a position to advance the field as much as this partnership, said Daniel Fisher, professor and head of the OSU School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
“Collaboration is critical to its success,” Fisher said. “All of these institutions working together creates a natural synergy, especially with the University of Oklahoma’s strength in meteorology and OSU’s expertise in building integrated UAV platforms.”
Each of the four universities brings its own unique expertise needed to make an ambitious project on this scale successful, Jacob said. OSU brings its strength in developing unmanned aircraft and autonomous control systems together with OU’s strength in meteorology, Nebraska’s understanding of atmospheric physics and Kentucky’s development of sensor technologies and systems integration.
