Swiss Meteodrone provides real-time low-level weather outlook

Switzerland’s Meteodrone is working to address one of the main elements that can disrupt or even prevent the world’s expanding range of UAV activities: the often sketchy, abruptly changing  weather conditions at the lower altitude levels in which drones operate.

Operators of research, public, or commercial drone missions are currently vulnerable to the arrival of unexpected or premature storms, fog, low-hanging clouds, ice, or other inhospitable weather conditions that can force craft to the ground – or prevent them from taking off at all. The climactic wildcard looms as an even larger risk in longer distance beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights that will be required for UAV activities to scale around the globe.

Switzerland’s Meteomatics wants to overcome those vagaries of local low-level weather conditions with its specially conceived Meteodrone, which provides accurate real-time atmospheric data that also generates increasingly reliable…