Oklahoma State University’s soaring drone program is taking off in yet another direction with multimillion-dollar support from the National Science Foundation.

The NSF has awarded a $1.49 million grant, part of its National Robotics Initiative 2.0 program, to OSU researchers He Bai, Rushikesh Kamalapurkar, Jamey Jacob and Matt Vance and former faculty member Balaji Jayaraman. The only grant of its kind awarded in Oklahoma will fund research that will use drone technology to estimate wind conditions in differing environments. While the idea of attaching wind-measuring devices to an unmanned vehicle isn’t itself groundbreaking, making drones able to measure wind speeds without additional devices is new.

As part of the Tier 1 Research Initiatives, the idea is that an unmanned vehicle on a set flight path can report wind conditions using the magnitude and direction of deviation from its preset flight path.  The research team has worked on research projects for the National Science Foundation, NASA and Oklahoma Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and understands the need for better methods to predict wind and estimate UAV trajectory in different wind environments.

The idea of an aerial “highway” system in urban areas isn’t unfathomable. In fact, NASA is currently working on an unmanned traffic management system to provide virtual drone highways. However, the weather data from those environments must be collected and interpreted efficiently in order to relay it to pilots and traffic management in real time so multiple vehicles can safely occupy the small spaces of urban environments. The system will be useful for urban air mobility or air taxi applications, as well.