Probabilistic Weather Forecasting Analysis for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Path Planning

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have been widely used in various services and are predicted to be extensively used in the near future. In UAV applications, weather supporting plays a critical role at all echelons from control, navigation, and path planning to asset safety. Adverse weather conditions such as thunderstorms, icing, turbulence, and wind are great influences on UAV safety and mission success. From the 4-D weather map and a UAV mission, the planning algorithm is implemented to calculate waypoints describing the UAV route. Given a UAV in an area of operation described by non-uniform grids, each is assigned with a probability of adverse weather that is updated periodically. Through a series of probabilistic analysis, the probability of adverse weather in each cell of the weather map, the probability of mission failure, and their associated confidence bounds can be calculated to maximize the performance of the unmanned aerial vehicle.