Methods and apparatus to guide an unmanned aerial vehicle for recovery thereof
AssigneeInsitu, Inc., a subsidiary of The Boeing Company
InventorMatthew J. Bartow
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods and apparatus to guide an unmanned aerial vehicle for recovery thereof are disclosed. A disclosed example apparatus to recover an aircraft or a payload thereof includes a tether line, and markers supported by the tether line at different positions of the tether line, the markers to be detected by the aircraft, the aircraft to be guided to engage the tether line by determining positions of the markers and calculating a position of at least a portion of the tether line based on the determined position of the markers.
Claims23
An apparatus to recover an aircraft or a payload carried thereby, the apparatus comprising:
- a tether line;
- and
- markers supported by the tether line at different positions of the tether line, the markers to be detected by the aircraft, the aircraft to be guided to engage the tether line by:
- determining positions of the markers,
- calculating a position of at least a portion of the tether line based on the determined position of the markers, and
- directing, based on the position of the at least the portion of the tether line, movement of the aircraft to cause at least one of the aircraft or a payload carried by the aircraft to contact the tether line while the aircraft is in flight.
A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions, which when executed, cause at least one processor to:
- determine positions of markers placed on a tether line, the markers placed at different positions of the tether line;
- calculate a position of at least portion of the tether line based on the determined positions of the markers;
- and
- direct, based on the position of the at least the portion of the tether line, movement of an aircraft to cause the aircraft or a payload carried by the aircraft to contact and engage the tether line for recovery of at least one of the aircraft or the payload.
A method to guide an aircraft, the method comprising:
- determining positions of markers, the markers placed at different positions of a tether line;
- calculating, by executing instructions with at least one processor, a position of at least a portion of the tether line based on the determined positions of the markers;
- and
- guiding the aircraft that is at a distance from the tether line toward the tether line to contact the tether line based on the position of the at least the portion of the tether line for recovery of the aircraft or a payload thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.