Research on Route Design Technology of UAV with Airborne Dropsonde

Compared with manned meteorological detection aircraft, UAV has the advantages of low cost and low risk. NASA has an extremely mature technical foundation in the use of UAV for meteorological detection, however, China is still at the early stage. The path planning of UAV largely depends on the mission planning system, but so far the need for dropsonde detection mission and path planning in China’s UAV mission planning system is not yet considered. Based on the meteorological detection requirements, this paper analyzes the technical characteristics of the UAV in this field, and various routes are designed for dropsonde detection according to the requirements of dropsonde detection mission and the characteristics of meteorological detection targets. Besides, according to the result of real-time meteorological observation, an adaptive route technology suitable for real-time flight is proposed. Consider the time, space limit and the flight performance of UAV, this technology can change the target according to the task needs and automatically adjust the flight route of dropsonde detection. With the use of this technology, the demand of flight route design for UAV when performing dropsonde detection can be basically satisfied.