High-altitude UAV glider swarms for geoscience research

The project is expected to help overcome difficulties encountered by conventional observation platforms when obtaining detailed in situ data from high altitudes, regions close to mountains or the sea surface and Polar Regions.

This autumn, the university will be launching MAVIS (Massive Atmospheric Volume Instrumentation System), a new project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, in partnership with the Scottish Marine Institute, and with the support of the British Antarctic Survey, the MetOffice and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science.

The university claims MAVIS will offer the possibility of a flexible measurement system that could open up new possibilities to atmospheric scientists, including more high quality and widespread measurements for accurate weather forecasting and monitoring of pollution and volcanic ash.

At the centre of MAVIS lies an innovative concept for an atmospheric sensing system: a fleet of small, very light, bespoke instrumented gliders are released en masse from a high altitude meteorological balloon over the environment to be observed.