Recently on IPWatchdog.com, we published an article about how Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) have teamed up to support bipartisan legislation that seeks to take the first steps to regulate commercial drone use. See Senators Booker, Hoeven draw up bipartisan bill promoting commercial drone use. Whenever we cover a story relating to technology we always like to take a look at the recently issued U.S. patents in that particular area to get a sense of what is going on in the industry. With that in mind, we took a look at recent patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of drone technologies.
In this search, we found a fair number of patents being issued to foreign firms, which could be some evidence that drone R&D in other countries might be outpacing those inventions produced by American firms.
For example, EADS Deustchland, also known as the Airbus Group, of Ottobrunn, Germany, has protected a flight control technology designed to prevent unmanned aerial vehicle (“UAV”) in-flight accidents, as is reflected by U.S. Patent No. 9037391, titled Unmanned Aircraft with Built-In Collision Warning System. This patent discloses an unmanned aircraft containing a flight control unit connected to a collision warning system which can detect a collision situation and provide collision avoidance data to an autopilot unit. This automated system for collision avoidance improves upon conventional methods which rely upon user input, which can be fraught with human errors.
A system that improves the execution of certain in-flight maneuvers during an immersive piloting experience is at the center of U.S. Patent No. 8983684, entitled Method of Dynamically Controlling the Attitude of a Drone in Order to Execute a Flip Type Maneuver Automatically and issued to wireless tech developer Parrot of Paris, France. The method of dynamically controlling the attitude of a rotary-wing drone claimed here involves a preprogrammed maneuver which imparts an upward thrust impulse to the drone and causes the drone to rotate about an axis. This technology also seeks to improve human operation of drone maneuvers by preventing an operator from overshooting a flip maneuver in such a way that the drone doesn’t return to a horizontal position.
One intriguing sense-and-avoid technology for UAVs coming from an American company can be seen in U.S. Patent No. 9037314, entitled UAV Power Line Position and Load Parameter Estimation. This patent protects a method of providing autonomous UAV navigation for avoiding power lines by measuring magnetic field values of a magnetic field, estimating the position and orientation of the UAV relative to existing power lines and navigating the UAV with respect to those power lines. This technology, developed by Optimal Ranging, Inc., of Santa Clara, CA, is designed to provide a sensor system that allows drones to operate in areas with heavy power line density, such as an urban environment, in a way that doesn’t require prior knowledge of power line location data.
Finally, our interest was piqued by a technology patented by The Boeing Company of Chicago, IL, to protect a system of using drones for clandestine removal of micro-cargo. U.S. Patent No. 8991793, entitled UAV Capture of Micro Cargo Aloft, discloses a system of transporting micro-cargo by an unmanned vehicle having a tether capture device to capture a tether which is suspending a micro-cargo container. The tether is held vertically aloft by a balloon which can be punctured by a sharp edge on the tether when a transition state is engaged. This invention is designed to provide a system for cargo removal in emergencies and other delicate situations during which landing an aircraft in an area may not be feasible.
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