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AssigneeCalifornia Institute of Technology
InventorsRobert A Hewitt, Jacob Izraelevitz, Donald F Ruffatto, Luis Phillipe C.F. Tosi, Matthew Gildner, Gene B Merewether
Estimating the term…
Systems and methods for visual inspection of a container such as an oil tank via a lighter-than-air aircraft are presented. According to one aspect, the aircraft includes a gondola attached to a balloon filled with lighter-than-air gas. Rigidly attached to the gondola is a suite of sensors, including a camera sensor, an inertial measurement unit and a range sensor. Navigation of the aircraft is based on information sensed by the suite of sensors and processed by control electronics arranged in the gondola. Embedded in the control electronics is an extended Kalman filter that calculates pose estimates of the aircraft based on the information sensed by the inertial measurement unit and updated by the camera sensor. The extended Kalman filter uses the information sensed by the range sensor to reduce uncertainty in the calculated pose estimate. Images captured by the camera sensor can be used to evaluate state of the container.
A system for visual inspection of an inside of a container, the system comprising:
A system for pose estimation of an aircraft configured to navigate in a dark environment, the system comprising:
An aircraft configured for traversal through a trajectory inside of a container, the aircraft comprising a gondola attached to a balloon that is filled with a lighter-than-air gas, the gondola comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.