Abstract
We propose a new technique to measure the vertical profile of horizontal wind velocity using color balloons and cheap digital cameras; the technique is based on a theory of computer vision, “3D recogntion”, wherein 3 dimensional coordinates of objects are reconstructed using several images taken from different angles or positions. The flow evaluate wind velocity in the new method is; (1) capturing released balloon trajectories by several digital cameras installed on the ground; (2) computing the 3D coordinate of the balloon with computer vision theory; (3) calculate wind velocity by temporal difference of balloon positions. The performance of the new method was compared to traditional pilot balloon observation. The root mean square of the difference between two methods are approximately 0.6 m s-1 in east-western wind and 0.7 m s-1 in south-northern wind.
