US 6,607,166 B1Granted

Inflatable flying body for the rescue descent of a person

AssigneeAstrium GmbH

InventorsKonstantin Pichkhadze, Igor Zaytsev, Stephan Walter

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Abstract

A person can safely descend from a burning high-rise building or the like using an inflatable flying body that has a hollow conical form in an inflated deployed condition, but is deflated and folded into a backpack form in a stowed condition. The flying body includes an upper stabilizing ring, a lower nose structure with a pneumatic damping body, spoke struts extending conically therebetween, a cover skin covering the abovementioned inflatable components to form the conical outer surface and provide aerodynamic braking drag, and gas generators to inflate the inflatable components. A person straps on the apparatus in the stowed backpack form and pulls a handle to actuate the gas generators for inflating the apparatus, whereby the expanding apparatus ejects the person from the building and then orients itself in a nose-down attitude during the descent. The pneumatic damping body damps and dissipates the landing impact energy.

Claims22

Dependent claims

An apparatus for enabling a person or cargo to descend from an elevation higher than a landing area, wherein said apparatus is unfoldable and inflatable into a deployed configuration having a generally conical outer shape with a narrower nose end and a wider end opposite thereto and a hollow inner space, and wherein said apparatus in said deployed configuration comprises:

an inflatable outer stabilizing ring at said wider end;
a nose structure including an inflatable central pneumatic damping element at said narrower nose end;
plural inflatable spoke struts extending conically between said nose structure and said outer stabilizing ring;
a cover skin arranged on and spanning between said spoke struts to define at least a portion of said generally conical outer shape;
at least one gas generator pneumatically connected to and adapted to inflate said outer stabilizing ring, said central pneumatic damping element, and said spoke struts;
and
a load support element that is adapted to receive the person or cargo thereon and that is arranged and secured in or on said nose structure at a location on or above said central pneumatic damping element in said deployed configuration.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.