FlowDrone: Wind Estimation and Gust Rejection on UAVs Using Fast-Response Hot-Wire Flow Sensors

Anonymous

Keywords: UAV, wind, gust, reinforcement learning, sensor, MEMS, quadrotor, simulation

TL;DR: We present FlowDrone: a quadrotor platform that uses high-speed onboard flow sensing and learning-based wind-aware control to improve performance in gusty conditions.

Abstract: Traditional multirotor UAV platforms do not directly sense wind; instead, drones typically observe the effects of wind indirectly through accumulated errors in position or trajectory tracking. In this work, we integrate a novel flow sensor based on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) hot-wire technology onto a multirotor UAV for wind estimation. In order to achieve superior tracking performance in windy conditions, we train a wind-aware residual-based controller via reinforcement learning using simulated wind gusts and their aerodynamic effects on the drone. In extensive hardware experiments, we demonstrate the wind-aware controller outperforming two strong `wind-unaware' baseline controllers in challenging windy conditions.