Demand for autonomous flying vehicles intended for transportation of people and goods is expected to accelerate in the next few years as urban air mobility maturity reaches level-4, a rating implying that hundreds of flights will simultaneously take off from urban aerodromes around the country. Wind sensors available on the vehicles and located in the air space will become a key necessity for ensuring safe navigation. Conventional anemometers suffer from various drawbacks due to their non-aerodynamic construction, high power consumption, complex signal processing, and cost. An airfoil-shaped low drag anemometer is presented for wind speed and direction measurement on tethered systems such as kites, balloons, and drones. The airfoil anemometer is equipped with a flexible, dual-layer capacitive pressure sensor with a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) diaphragm for wind speed and a commercial digital magnetometer for wind direction measurement. The fabrication process for the diaphragm-type capacitive sensor is presented, along with characterization of the sensor in a pressure chamber. The completed sensor is then integrated into a NACA-2412 profile airfoil, along with a commercial magnetometer, for demonstration in a laboratory-scale wind tunnel.
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