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The Autonomous Soaring Project has one
simple goal

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is to program a small UAV to

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soar and thermals similar to the way

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a glider pilot or birds do

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The aircraft has off-the-shelf autopilot.

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It has been reprogrammed for this project to

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automatically detect that it's in an updraft

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and then use that updraft by circling.

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During the 17 flight of this project

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we used a total of 23 updrafts

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and we had an average climb of about 500 feet.

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In a single updraft we climbed

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2700 feet or a little bit more.

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There's a wide variety of applications for this

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technology to help UAVs do things like

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forest fire detection,

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police surveillance, border patrol

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and weather monitoring.