Uncrewed Systems (UxS) Research and Operations
UxS leadership, development, and operational deployment for environmental sensing.
I work extensively in the leadership, development, and operational deployment of UxS (mostly uncrewed aerial systems, UAS) for environmental sensing at NSSL, with primary efforts in atmospheric weather profiling and secondary applications in post-storm damage assessment.
A significant component of this portfolio is the end-to-end advancement of the CopterSonde weather-sensing UAS. This includes leadership as Principal Investigator on a NOAA CRADA with International Met Systems and leading and managing funded projects (e.g., PRODIGEE, LAAIRS) to enhance platform capabilities. Key R&D goals focus on increasing wind tolerance from 22 m/s to ~35 m/s, extending flight duration/max altitude, environmental hardening, and developing automated systems for launch, landing, and charging. This technical development, which also guided an undergraduate aerospace engineering capstone project, has culminated in a co-inventor role on a 2025 patent application for an “Enhanced Uncrewed Aircraft System-Based Atmospheric Vertical Profiler.”
Beyond platform development, this research explores the operational impact of UAS-collected data. This includes the demonstration of the first large-scale (10+ site) mesoscale network of weather-sensing UAS and the collection of data in urban environments to observe turbulence and heat island effects (SCALES). Other projects use the UAS-collected data to understand the environments important to convection (e.g., PERiLS and TRACER, Lappin et al. 2024). Funded research investigates the optimal design of UAS observation networks (“Venturing Into the Vertical”) and quantifies their impact on forecast quality. Analysis of cases near severe storms has demonstrated improvements in the representation of pre-storm environments and tornado-related forecast parameters within the Warn-on-Forecast system. Future work includes a proposed collaborative project between NSSL and PMEL to deploy the CopterSonde from NOAA ocean research vessels to profile the air-sea transition zone.
A second major effort involves the use of UAS for post-tornado damage surveys. This work includes helping to build and operate NSSL’s UAS Damage Survey program, acting as a trained pilot, and serving as the Mission Commander for NSSL-NOAA operations. Research in this area has explored novel applications, including a proposal to apply machine learning approaches to UAS-collected imagery to analyze tree-fall patterns for tornado intensity estimation.