Flying for Wind Power

Aerial photography can be of great value in the planning process for wind farms, including tasks such as wind resource estimation, verification of area maps and finding routes for transportation. However, this can be a rather expensive tool. A system has been developed to use a small unmanned air vehicle (UAV) to perform such photography tasks by using automated optimised routing and piloting. The goal was to allow inexperienced model airplane pilots to perform aerial photography with the required precision. This article explains the concepts, and the UAV hardware and system software developed within the project, which was conducted at Overspeed GmbH & Co. KG.