Abstracts: May 20, 2024 Microsoft Research Podcast

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge with them through short, compelling conversations about new and noteworthy achievements. In this episode, Principal Research Manager Andrey Kolobov (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/akolobov/) joins host Gretchen Huizinga to discuss “WindSeer: Real-time volumetric wind prediction over complex terrain aboard a small uncrewed aerial vehicle (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/windseer-real-time-volumetric-wind-prediction-over-complex-terrain-aboard-a-small-uav/),” or sUAV. sUAVs can fly farther and more safely if they can reason about the terrain-affected wind in their vicinity. Traditional wind predictions ignore small-terrain features and work at the scale of hours and miles, far too coarsely for sUAVs. WindSeer can estimate the terrain-dependent wind field around an sUAV in flight, with limited onboard compute and measurement data, paving the way for safer and more energy-efficient autonomous drone operation.Learn more:* WindSeer: Real-time volumetric wind prediction over complex terrain aboard a small uncrewed aerial vehicle (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/windseer-real-time-volumetric-wind-prediction-over-complex-terrain-aboard-a-small-uav/)