System for locating the position of the end of the boom, the mouth of the refuelling vessel and the tanker
AssigneeDefensya Ingenieria Internacional, S.L.
InventorAlberto Adarve Lozano
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for locating the end of a boom and that of a refueling vessel in a mid-flight refueling operation from a tanker that includes means for locating the position of the inlet mouth of the fuel that is inside the vessel of the receiving plane that comprise at least one vision subsystem arranged on the tanker. Also included are means for locating the position of the boom tip comprising light emitters, placed on the boom tip, along with the vision subsystem arranged on the tanker, and processing means constructed to use the images obtained from the locating means to allow their positions and inclinations to be exactly determined with respect to a common coordinate system.
Claims16
A system of locating a boom (15) tip and a receiving vessel during a mid-flight refueling operation that conveys fuel from a tanker to a receiving plane, comprising:
- a tanker (40) equipped with the boom (15) that includes a boom tip;
- the receiving vessel with a vessel device (5) and fuel inlet mouth, the receiving vessel being attachable to a receiving plane, the vessel device being made from a material chosen from the group consisting of steel, titanium, Teflon® or Kevlar®, and the vessel device being constructed with a semi-hollow band that includes at least four transparent zones made from a material chosen from the group consisting of graphene or aluminum oxide, and each zone having a light-emitting element embedded therein;
- means for locating a position of the fuel inlet mouth that includes plural light emitters;
- at least one vision subsystem arranged on the tanker, and including at least two cameras (26);
- means for locating a position of the boom tip, including plural light emitters placed on the boom tip, and constructed to operate in cooperation with the vision subsystem;
- and
- processing means configured to determine, through images obtained from the means for locating the position of the fuel inlet mouth and the means for locating the position of the boom tip, to determine the positions of the fuel inlet mouth and the boom tip with respect to a common coordinate system.
A system of locating a boom (15) tip and a receiving vessel during a mid-flight refueling operation that conveys fuel from a tanker to a receiving plane, comprising:
- a tanker (40) equipped with a boom (15) having a boom tip;
- a receiving vessel (9) attachable to a receiving plane and having a fuel inlet mouth (8) for receiving fuel located inside the receiving vessel;
- three locating devices (41), a first one being located on the receiving vessel, a second one being located under the tanker and a third one being located on the boom tip, wherein each locating device (41) is constructed with:
- at least three light emitters (38), each having a diffuser and a driver (37) for powering the driver;
- a microcontroller (36) for the at least three light emitters;
- at least two high-speed vision cameras (26), each having a frame rate greater than 30 fps) and each having a respective lens (25) and a narrow bandpass optical filter (24) tuned to light that is emitted by another locating device, and each of the cameras including high-speed, field-programmable gate arrays to determine in real time the coordinates of the points of light emitted by the other locating device;
- and
- a light sensor (35) having a lens and being capable of detecting light from another locating device (41) when the other locating device (41) is nearby;
- electronic equipment (33,36,39) including a communication bus, the electronic equipment being constructed to process and save coordinates provided by the at least two cameras to obtain the relative coordinates of each emitter with respect to one of the cameras.
A system of refueling a receiving plane from a tanker, where the receiving plane includes a receiving vessel, plural cameras that each include optical filters and an image processor, and light emitters, and the tanker (40) includes a boom (15) and boom tip with plural light emitters, comprising:
- visualizing the tanker from the receiving vessel using the cameras to detect patterns of light emitted by the light emitters that follow the frame frequency of the cameras;
- determining a position of the tanker (40) from the visualizing step;
- and positioning the receiving plane adjacent the tanker (40) by the visualizing and determining, thereby to allow the refueling.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.