Estimating wind from an airborne vehicle

Abstract

Embodiments are described for determining wind by an airborne aerial vehicle without reliance on direct measurements of airspeed by the vehicle. Instead, wind may be computationally estimated using disclosed techniques for utilizing measurements of only ground-speed and heading, or only measurements of forces experienced by the airborne aerial vehicle during flight. In one technique, samples of ground-speed measurements and corresponding heading measurements of an airborne vehicle are used in a mathematical optimization of a wind-driven hypothesis of deviations between the two types of measurement at each of multiple sampling times. In another technique, an aerodynamic model of an aerial vehicle can be used to adjust parameters of a wind hypothesis in order to achieve a best-fit between predicted and measured forces on the aerial vehicle during flight.