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Cutting-edge weather sensor technology improves accuracy of critical forecasts

by Kathy Hagood
Brevard Technical Journal

Ensco Inc.’s philosophy of “innovation starts here” is in keeping with its current development of a cutting-edge weather sensor technology called GEMS.
The revolutionary technology was partly inspired by the airborne tornado sensors depicted in the blockbuster movie Twister. 

The Global Environment MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) Sensors being developed could be used in large numbers to create a weather data gathering field that likely would give meteorologists a better understanding of various weather and climate phenomena.

The technology could help improve the accuracy of critical weather forecasts such as hurricane track projections, said John Manobianco, Ph.D., director of advanced technologies for the company.

“It costs about a half a million dollars to evacuate a coastal area,” Manobianco said. “If we were better able to predict a hurricane’s behavior, we might be able to avoid unnecessary evacuations.”

The web-like data-gathering platform could also be used to collect information for homeland security and military purposes such as threat assessment and damage monitoring. Multiple GEMS probes could augment the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for improved intelligence gathering.

“Weather and homeland security are just two of many areas the technology could be applied to. It could also be of great use in agriculture and environmental monitoring,” Manobianco said.

Ensco, a Falls Church, Va.-based engineering and technology solutions company, has offices in Cocoa Beach and Melbourne and runs an applied meteorology unit at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The privately owned company employs about 800 across the nation and generates $100 million in revenues annually.
The relatively new GEMS project is based out of the company’s Melbourne operations.

The GEMS project started as the brainchild of Manobianco and his wife, Donna. Manobianco was serving as the director of the company’s applied meteorology unit at the spaceport when he and his wife, a nanotechnology and wireless sensor networks consultant, began discussing the concept of an airborne wireless network of dust-size sensors.

Through his work with weather sensor technology Manobianco knew that meteorologists needed better data about developing weather systems. They needed access to multiple simultaneous readings of wind speed, direction, moisture, temperature and pressure within developing systems.

Perhaps nanotechnology offered the key. The movie “Twister” that used the special effect of sensors let loose in the updraft of a tornado further inspired the couple’s thoughts on an airborne sensor network. 
Finally, Manobianco approached Ensco about developing the technology.

“At first they considered this a basement project, but after we got a NASA grant, they began to take it seriously as a viable research and development effort. I basically created a new job for myself,” Manobianco said.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts awarded Ensco $75,000 in May 2002 for “proof-of-concept” funding, then provided $500,000 in a follow-on technology development contract awarded in September 2003.

As work on GEMS development progressed, Manobianco and his group learned that power sources have not been miniaturized enough to allow for nano-size sensors. So the prototype probes were enlarged and a helium-filled polymer shell employed to float the assembly.

“We’re primarily using off-the-shelf technology and our concept was ahead of the technology now available,” Manobianco said. “Decades from now the technology may be available for nano-size probes.”
But for now the probes will be at least football size. Each such helium-filled probe will easily house solar cells, sensors, data processors, GPS and RF communications electronics.

The probes are being designed to be inexpensive to manufacture and biodegradable. Today, the prototype probes cost hundreds of dollars to produce, but the goal for the technology is to create a probe that will cost less than a dollar to manufacture.

Because of the continuing miniaturization of electronic and other technology improvements, the GEMS probes will continue to be refined to incorporate the latest technology breakthroughs, Manobianco said.
Because the NASA grant is coming to an end Manobianco’s group is looking for additional funding from NASA or the Department of Defense. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is considering funding further GEMS development.

Ensco is also looking into the possibility of partnering with a small company that would have access to special small business research and development grants.

“There’s only so much money for research and development, and our project will take time before there’s a major pay off,” Manobianco said.

Once the company fully develops, tests and proves a GEMS prototype, it would license its manufacture to another company, he said.

“We’re a science and technology company, not a manufacturing company,” he said.

For more information about GEMS and Ensco, visit www.ensco.com