Unmanned aerial vehicle visual line of sight control
View Patent ↗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.
1. 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.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the base location is a launching location where the UAV took off, or a location of a user device controlling the UAV, and the in-flight location is a location of the UAV determined by a location subsystem of the UAV.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the database of three-dimensional geographic features stores data on one or more natural or man-made structures.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the database stores a list of geofences having at least three dimensions, and wherein determining that the VLOS interruption comprises determining that the UAV has entered a geofence that is behind a geographic feature that intersects a line between the base location and the in-flight location.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the database stores a topographical map of the three-dimensional features, and wherein determining that the VLOS interruption comprises determining that, according to the map, at least one of the three-dimensional features intersects a line between the base location and the in-flight location.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the topographical map indicates a respective height of each three-dimensional feature, and determining that at least one of the three-dimensional features intersects the line between the base location and the in-flight location comprises determining that an altitude of the UAV is below a height of the three-dimensional feature.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location is interrupted comprises:
sending an optical signal from the UAV to one or more user devices; and
determining that the signal from the one or more user devices has been interrupted.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the contingency action comprises navigating the UAV to a landing location or navigating the UAV to ascend to an altitude that is within the VLOS of the base location.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the contingency action comprises navigating the UAV along a previous flight path until the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location is no longer interrupted.
10. The method of claim 1 , comprising, in response to determining that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location of the UAV has been interrupted, presenting an alert on a user device, the alert including at least one of a visual or an audio message.
11. 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.
12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the system is a cloud-based processing system, a system onboard the UAV or a system onboard a user device controlling the UAV.
13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the base location is a launching location where the UAV took off or a location of a user device controlling the UAV, and the in-flight location is a location of the UAV determined by a location subsystem of the UAV.
14. The system of claim 12 , wherein the database of three-dimensional geographic features stores data on one or more natural or man-made structures.
15. The system of claim 11 , wherein the database stores a list of geofences having at least three dimensions, and wherein determining that the VLOS is interrupted comprises determining that the UAV has entered a geofence that corresponds to a geographic feature that intersects a line between the base location and the in-flight location.
16. The system of claim 11 , wherein the database stores a topographical map of the three-dimensional features, and wherein determining that the VLOS is interrupted comprises determining that, according to the map, at least one of the three-dimensional features intersects a line between the base location and the in-flight location.
17. The system of claim 11 , wherein determining that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location is interrupted comprises:
sending an optical signal from the UAV to one or more user devices; and
determining that the signal from the one or more user devices has been interrupted.
18. The system of claim 11 , wherein the contingency action comprises navigating the UAV to a landing location or navigating the UAV to ascend to an altitude that is within the VLOS of the base location.
19. The system of claim 11 , wherein the contingency action comprises navigating the UAV along a previous flight path until the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location is no longer interrupted.
20. The system of claim 11 , the operations comprising, in response to determining that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location of the UAV is or will be interrupted, presenting an alert on a user device, the alert including at least one of a visual or an audio message.
21. 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.
22. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , wherein obtaining an in-flight location of the UAV comprises:
creating a point cloud of a structure; and
determining the in-flight location of the UAV using the point cloud.
23. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , wherein predicting that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location will be interrupted comprises determining a signal strength of a wireless signal between the UAV and a controller is approaching a threshold value, and the contingency action comprises preventing the UAV from flying beyond a distance from the controller such that the signal strength is above the threshold value.
24. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , the operations comprising submitting at least one of structural polygonal data indicating heights of structures or a topographical map from a controller to the UAV, wherein predicting that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location will be interrupted comprises determining that the UAV is approaching a space where a geographic feature intersects the VLOS according to the structural polygonal data or topographical map.
25. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , 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, wherein movement of the control surface causes the UAV to land at a landing location or to fly to a position that is within VLOS of a ground control station of the UAV.
26. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , wherein predicting that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location will be interrupted comprises:
sending an optical signal from the UAV to one or more user devices; and
determining that the optical signal from the one or more user devices has been interrupted.
27. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , wherein the contingency action comprises navigating the UAV to a landing location or navigating the UAV to ascend to an altitude that is within the VLOS of the base location.
28. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , wherein the contingency action comprises navigating the UAV along a previous flight path until the VLOS of the base location and the in-flight location is no longer interrupted.
29. The non-transitory storage device of claim 21 , the operations comprising, in response to predicting that the VLOS between the base location and the in-flight location of the UAV will be interrupted, presenting an alert on a user device, the alert including at least one of a visual or an audio message.