Winging it for weather forecasting
An Evergreen company is using a novel approach – airplanes – to get more accurate weather forecasts. AirDat LLC has developed the TAMDAR (Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting) sensor.
It’s a black-box type of device that can take weather readings and process and distribute them in 20 seconds, using a global satellite network and a data center located in Morrisville, N.C.
AirDat wants to equip approximately 500 aircraft in the United States with TAMDAR sensors by the end of 2007.
“The ability to improve weather forecasts is limited by a lack of data,” said AirDat founder Mark Anderson.
He said it takes an hour to get and process data from the 138 balloon launches a day, while AirDat is using planes to take 30 to 40 different readings from several hundred locations.
Anderson founded AirDat in 1999 in his Conifer garage. The company has 22 employees in Evergreen and North Carolina. The privately held company has received investment from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The TAMDAR sensor measures basic atmospheric properties, including humidity, pressure, temperature, winds, icing and turbulence. The device is also equipped with a GPS tracking system that can monitor location, time and altitude.
Electronic eyes for the blind
Mitsuhiro Aso, 27, a student at a school for the blind, was all smiles as he tried out the Forehead Retina System at Tokyo University’s research office. The system enables the visually impaired to sense what is in front of them through tactile sensation in the forehead. Aso could “see” a black triangle on a white board.
