Layer approach to managing airspace of large groups of drones
A method for coordinating drones flying in a divided airspace that includes sending patrol instructions to each drone of a set of airborne drones in a divided airspace, where the divided airspace includes mutually exclusive horizontal layers having a ceiling altitude and a floor altitude and at least one transition space layer, where the layers comprise sectors, where the patrol instructions direct the drone into a flight path in a sector, sending first transition instructions to a first drone, where the transition instructions direct the first drone to move from its sector to a transition space layer and from the transition space layer to exit the divided airspace, sending second transition instructions to a second drone, where the second transition instructions direct the second drone to move from outside the divided airspace to a transition space layer and from the transition space layer to the sector of the first drone.
1 . A method for coordinating drones flying in a divided airspace, the method comprising:
sending patrol instructions to each drone of a set of airborne drones in a divided airspace, where the divided airspace comprises mutually exclusive horizontal layers having a ceiling altitude and a floor altitude and at least one transition space layer, where the mutually exclusive horizontal layers comprise sectors, where the patrol instructions to each drone direct the drone into a flight path within a sector within the divided airspace, and where the at least one transition space layer is a horizontal layer between two other horizontal layers;
sending first transition instructions to a first drone of the set of airborne drones, where the first transition instructions direct the first drone to move vertically from its sector into a transition space layer and to horizontally traverse the transition space layer to exit the divided airspace;
sending second transition instructions to a second drone that is not within the set of airborne drones, where the second transition instructions direct the second drone to move from outside the divided airspace to horizontally traverse a transition space layer and move vertically from the transition space layer into the sector that the first drone left.
2 . The method of claim 1 further comprising:
launching each drone in the set of airborne drones; and
sending initialization instructions to each drone that direct the drone to navigate to its assigned sector.
3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
directing each drone to capture sensor data using an onboard sensor while patrolling its sector.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one drone includes a visible light camera and at least one drone includes an infrared camera.
5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein at least one other drone includes a lidar sensor.
6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the sectors of a layer of the mutually exclusive horizontal layers are uniform in shape and size.
7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the sectors of a layer of the mutually exclusive horizontal layers are not uniform in shape and size.
8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein a maximum of two drones are assigned to any sector.
9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein any two drones within a sector are assigned different altitudes.
10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the drones within a layer of the mutually exclusive horizontal layers have the same type of sensor.
11 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising sending updated patrol instructions to at least one drone that directs the at least one drone to move to a different sector and patrol that sector.
12 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising sending updated patrol instructions to at least one drone, where the updated patrol instructions implement changes to shape of at least one sector in the divided airspace.
13 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the first transition instructions direct the first drone to achieve an altitude within the transition space layer.
14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the second transition instructions direct the second drone to achieve an altitude within the transition space layer.