System and method of collision avoidance in unmanned aerial vehicles
AssigneeBotlink, LLC
InventorAlexander J. Kube
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A collision avoidance system includes an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), a UAV controller, and a safety data aggregator. The UAV includes a positional sensor, and is coupled to communicate positional data to the UAV controller, and receive commands from the UAV controller. The safety data aggregator is coupled to communicate with the UAV controller, wherein the safety data aggregator collects positional data from one or more UAV controllers, stores collected positional data in a safety data buffer, and extracts spatially relevant positional data in response to a request from the UAV controller.
Claims7
A collision avoidance system comprising:
- an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) having a positional sensor and a communication system configured for bi-directional communication;
- and
- a safety data aggregator coupled to receive positional data from the UAV and additional UAVs, wherein the safety data aggregator collects positional data from the UAV and additional UAVs, stores collected positional information in a geo-spatial database, receives a request for spatially relevant positional data from the UAV, wherein the request includes a position of the UAV, extracts spatially relevant positional data from the geo-spatial database within a predetermined radius or distance of the position provided by the UAV, and provides the extracted spatially relevant positional data to the UAV, wherein the UAV utilizes the spatially relevant positional data to automatically avoid collisions between the UAV and other UAVs.
A method of aggregating and distributing safety data, the method comprising:
- collecting safety data from a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, including positional data associated with each of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles;
- providing the collected safety data to a safety data aggregator;
- collecting safety data from one or more remote sensor networks capable of detecting objects in three dimensional space, wherein the safety data collected from the one or more remote sensor networks is provided to the safety data aggregator;
- storing the safety data collected from the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles and from the one or more remote sensor networks to a geo-spatial database that is searchable to provide spatially relevant positional/safety data;
- extracting spatially relevant positional/safety data to a UAV in response to position information provided by a UAV, wherein extracting spatially relevant safety data from the geo-spatial database based on the positional data provided by the UAV includes extracting safety data within a predetermined radius or distance of the position provided in the request from the UAV;
- and
- providing the spatially relevant safety data to the UAV for collision avoidance analysis.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.