Unmanned aerial vehicle visual line of sight control
AssigneeUnmanned Innovation, Inc.
InventorsVolkan Gurel, Bernard J. Michini, Edward Dale Steakley
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Methods, systems and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media for unmanned aerial vehicle visual line of sight flight operations. A UAV computer system may be configured to ensure the UAV is operating in visual line of sight of one or more ground operators. The UAV may confirm that it has a visual line of sight with the one or more user devices, such as a ground control station, or the UAV may ensure that the UAV does not fly behind or below a structure such that the ground operator would not be able to visually spot the UAV. The UAV computer system may be configured in such a way that UAV operation will maintain the UAV in visual line of sight of a base location.
Claims29
A method, comprising:
- obtaining a base location of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV);
- obtaining an in-flight location of the UAV;
- determining, using a database of three-dimensional geographic features, a visual line of sight (VLOS) interruption between the base location and the in-flight location of the UAV;
- and
- in response to the determining, instructing the UAV to perform a contingency action, wherein the method is performed by one or more computer processors.
A system, comprising:
- one or more computer processors;
- and
- a non-transitory storage device storing instructions operable to cause the one or more computer processors to perform operations comprising:
- obtaining a base location of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV);
- obtaining an in-flight location of the UAV;
- determining, using a database of three-dimensional geographic features, that a visual line of sight (VLOS) between the base location and the in-flight location is or will be interrupted;
- and
- in response to the determining, causing the UAV to perform a contingency action, the contingency action including providing a command to a controller to control at least one of a motor or actuator of the UAV to move a control surface of the UAV.
A non-transitory storage device storing instructions operable to cause one or more computer processors to perform operations comprising:
- obtaining a base location of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV);
- obtaining an in-flight location of the UAV;
- predicting, using a database of three-dimensional geographic features, that a visual line of sight (VLOS) between the base location and the in-flight location will be interrupted;
- and
- in response to the predicting, causing the UAV to perform a contingency action.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.