How to simulate icing on UAVs
I have contributed a chapter to a new book about the simulation of aircraft icing. The book is a handy reference for anybody interested in working with icing CFD. My chapter summarizes my research and outlines the main challenges and key findings I discovered in…
Trappers Trail
On a more personal note. During the last two years, I had the incredible privilege and luck to get started as a dog sled driver (or musher as we say). Mushing has been my childhood dream ever since I read the Yukon Goldrush adventure stories…
How to fly a drone in Svalbard (safely).
Recently, a report on the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) was released during the SIOS Polar Night Week in Longyearbyen. It is the fifth issue of an annual series of reports published by the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS). Before, I wrote two…
Training course on Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles in Svalbard (UAV4Svalbard)
This autumn I will be part of a training course with the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS). The course will be about how to use drones for scientific purposes specifically in Svalbard. It is intended to give researchers who have not worked with…
Using drones to count reindeer in Svalbard
In our new publication, we present the results of using drones to count reindeer in Svalbard. The work is based on fieldwork results that we collected in a summer campaign in 2021. The work was conducted in collaboration with NTNU, UNIS, and the Norwegian Polar…
Organizing a workshop
I had a very busy year with not too many opportunities to blog. One of the most recent activities was the organization of the first-ever conference on the topic of my main research – the UAV Icing Workshop! One week after the 1st UAV Icing…
Monitoring the snow cornices for avalanche risks
Recently, I joined a team of researchers to fly drones to inspect the snow cornices on Gruvefjellet – a mountainside in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Their work helps to understand and assess the risks of cornice-triggered avalanches in Longyearbyen. Snow cornices are overhanging snow structures that form…
Can ice fragments destroy a UAV propeller?
In one of our recent icing wind tunnel experiments, the NTNU UAV Icing Lab investigated if ice fragments are a hazard to UAV propellers. The resulting high-speed video footage shows the moment ice impacts the propeller blades. Here is a small preview of the footage….
Measuring wind with off-the-shelf drones
In our latest publication, we are introducing a novel method to measure wind with small quadcopters. The method works for drones type DJI Phantom and Mavic. The method post-processes the internal flight data (attitude data) from the drone to estimate wind speed and wind direction….
More on How Unmanned Vehicles are used for Science in Svalbard
Today a report on the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) was released during the SIOS Polar Night Week in Longyearbyen. It is the fourth issue of an annual series of reports published by the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS). I wrote a chapter…