Thermal soaring gliders exploit naturally occurring rising air (called thermals) as sources of
energy. These sources generally appear in uncertain and random way as their position and
strength are hardly predictable. Several atmospheric factors affect the behavior of thermals
(season, time of the day and nature of vegetation on the ground, etc). However, a statistical
model of thermals to be encountered can be build. Soaring in a optimal manner while taking
advantage of thermals represents thus a stochastic optimization problem that can be solved …