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US 9,127,908 B2Granted
Multimode unmanned aerial vehicle
AssigneeAero Vironment, Inc.
InventorCarlos Thomas Miralles
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system comprising an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) configured to transition from a terminal homing mode to a target search mode, responsive to an uplink signal and/or an autonomous determination of scene change.
Claims24
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) comprising:
- a processing unit configured to transition the UAV from a first mode trajectory to a second mode trajectory, wherein the first mode trajectory is a terminal homing mode trajectory;
- and wherein the UAV is further configured to deliver a payload into a target volume while in the terminal homing mode trajectory.
An apparatus comprising:
- unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) airframe configured to deliver a payload into a target volume via homing on the target volume;
- and
- a processing unit onboard the UAV airframe, wherein the processing unit comprises at least one of:
- a central processing unit configured to execute computer-executable instructions;
- electrical circuitry;
- electronic circuitry;
- and a logical gate array;
- and wherein the processing unit is configured to transition the apparatus from a first mode trajectory to a second mode trajectory, wherein the first mode trajectory is a terminal homing mode trajectory wherein the terminal homing mode trajectory comprises one or more instructions for the UAV homing on the target volume;
- and wherein the processing unit is further configured to autonomously transition the apparatus from the terminal homing mode trajectory to the second mode trajectory, responsive to an indicator generated by onboard processing of the processing unit as an autonomous determination of scene change.
6 more elements
A method of transitioning flight modes of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) comprising:
- testing, by a UAV processing unit, for a mode change while in a first mode trajectory, wherein the first mode trajectory is an automatic terminal homing mode trajectory for delivering a payload to a target volume, said automatic terminal homing mode trajectory comprising at least one of an automatic strike sub-mode and payload deployment sub-mode;
- receiving a mode change command signal autonomously based on one or more image change conditions detected via a UAV onboard targeting sensor;
- and
- transitioning to a second mode trajectory based on the mode change command signal.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.