Rapid aircraft inspection with autonomous drone base station systems
AssigneeEasy Aerial Inc.
InventorIvan Stamatovski
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system for inspecting an aircraft includes a drone, a base station, and a controller. The drone includes one or more cameras. The base station has a storage compartment configured to store the autonomous drone therein. The controller has a processor and a memory. The memory has instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the processor, cause the base station to drive to a first predetermined location relative to the aircraft, and cause the drone to fly from the storage compartment of the base station to a first predetermined position relative to the aircraft so that the drone can record image data of at least portions of the aircraft with the one or more cameras.
Claims21
A system for inspecting an aircraft, the system comprising:
- an autonomous drone including at least one camera;
- a base station having a storage compartment configured to store the autonomous drone therein;
- a base station controller having a base station processor and a base station memory, the base station memory having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the base station processor, cause the base station to
- drive to a first predetermined location relative to the aircraft;
- and
- open the storage compartment;
- and
- a drone controller having a drone processor and a drone memory, the drone memory having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the drone processor, cause the autonomous drone to:
- determine that the storage compartment of the base station is open;
- take flight from the base station when the storage compartment is open;
- fly to a first predetermined position relative to the aircraft;
- and
- record image data of at least portions of the aircraft with the at least one camera.
A method for inspecting an aircraft, the method comprising:
- causing a base station to autonomously drive to a first predetermined location relative to an aircraft;
- causing a drone supported by the base station to autonomously take flight from the base station;
- causing the drone to autonomously fly to a first predetermined position relative to the aircraft;
- and
- causing the drone to inspect the aircraft by recording image data of at least a portion of the aircraft when disposed in the first predetermined position.
A system for inspecting an aircraft, the system comprising:
- a drone including at least one camera;
- a base station having a storage compartment configured to store the autonomous drone therein;
- and
- a controller having a processor and a memory, the memory having instructions stored thereon, which when executed by the processor, cause the base station to drive to a first predetermined location relative to the aircraft, and cause the drone to fly from the storage compartment of the base station to a first predetermined position relative to the aircraft so that the drone can record image data of at least portions of the aircraft with the at least one camera.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.