Wind sensor for miniature robot chemical plume tracking

Today, wind sensors are widely used to measure wind speed and direction for various purposes. Due to its wide applications, many wind sensors are commercially available off-the-shelf. This paper presents the study and development of a particular wind sensor for the measurement of wind velocity (direction and speed). Its potential applications include chemical plume tracking using miniature robots. As targeted for miniature robot, it is highly desirable to be smaller in size, lighter in weight, and simpler in design with less circuitry and less power consumption. In this paper, from the design of the wind sensor down to the experiments and post-processing of the sensor output are presented. The result shows that the wind sensor performance is promising for providing proper real time wind speed and direction information for various applications, especially robotic chemical plume tracking related applications.