Automated air traffic control of unmanned air vehicles
First Claim
1. A method for controlling a plurality of unmanned air vehicles, the method comprising:
- defining a first flyway, the first flyway being geographically located and having a central line and an inflow pattern;
acquiring, by each unmanned air vehicle, information on a position and velocity of one or more other unmanned air vehicles of the plurality of unmanned air vehicles;
adjusting, by each unmanned air vehicle, a direction of travel of the unmanned air vehicle, the adjusting being in accordance with;
a value of the inflow pattern at the position of the unmanned air vehicle; and
the position, or the velocity, or both the position and the velocity, of the one or more other unmanned air vehicles on the first flyway.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method and system for automated air traffic management of unmanned vehicles that assures safety and continuous flow, even for vehicles of wide-ranging capabilities. Some embodiments include onboard equipment that distributes the burden of management across all the vehicles in a given airspace so that autonomous cooperation between vehicles creates useful group-level behavior. Vehicles carry definitions of rules of interaction on shared flyways. In conjunction with a means of exchanging location and velocity information with close neighbors, onboard algorithms calculate complementary navigation vectors that inform each vehicle'"'"'s autopilot of a cooperative trajectory. The collective result of individual, autonomous decisions is cooperation at a group scale that manages traffic features such as density and spacing without the need for a ground-based communication infrastructure.
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Citations
23 Claims
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1. A method for controlling a plurality of unmanned air vehicles, the method comprising:
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defining a first flyway, the first flyway being geographically located and having a central line and an inflow pattern; acquiring, by each unmanned air vehicle, information on a position and velocity of one or more other unmanned air vehicles of the plurality of unmanned air vehicles; adjusting, by each unmanned air vehicle, a direction of travel of the unmanned air vehicle, the adjusting being in accordance with; a value of the inflow pattern at the position of the unmanned air vehicle; and the position, or the velocity, or both the position and the velocity, of the one or more other unmanned air vehicles on the first flyway. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23)
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Specification