Category: Drone design
Spy, Dragonfly, Chop Chop
Straight out of science fiction and into British Secretary of State for Defence’s patent portfolio, this drone flies like a dragonfly, “a drone having an elongate fuselage and four wings arranged to provide lift by flapping.” It’s the size of a Corona cigar with a camera on each end, and two wings on each side, and it flies. The very brief patent text is focused mainly on the cameras, and very little is said about […]
Tiny Cars Can Inspect and Repair Pipes
We can all agree that plumbing is the cat’s meow. You get water on demand, and once you’re done with it, whoosh, it’s gone. This magic is made possible with plumbing. But plumbing is not forever. It needs to be cared for, maintained, loved. Bad things happen if plumbing fails. Expensive things. This invention will take care of plumbing. As the patent states, “The inspections of underground pipe systems are of utmost importance to preserve […]
Cool Flying Machine
Ever wanted to fly? Sure, we all have. Here is a machine that will let you soar in the sky. The pilot can control it manually, or it can fly on auto-pilot, presumably taking a wounded person out of a dangerous zone. The fans can run on batteries or a gas engine. To control the rotorcraft, the fans can be tilted for forward flight, and their speed varied for yaw because they counter-rotate. Claim 1 […]
Flying Generator Drone Breaks Two-Hour Barrier
A world of opportunity is awaiting the drone that can fly for over 45 minutes. Here is a version that can fly 100 miles on one gallon of fuel, carrying a gallon of payload. It can hopscotch anywhere in its range and become a small electric generator. This is good news. Flight time is one of the most annoying and brutal barriers, governed by energy-density versus weight, recharge speeds, and availability of peak power for […]
Drone Slices, Dices, and Makes Julienne Fries
Simultaneously competing in the category of Most Versatile and Narrowest Patent, this latest patent application throws the proverbial Kitchen Sink into the drone world. Basing its priority on a 2002 Provisional patent application, having gone through not one, not two, but seventeen Continuation patent applications, this application is a testament to how not to use the patent system. At its core, it’s a good invention: a drone with a built-in parachute, tiltable propellers, waterproof body, […]
DJI’s Answer to EM Interference: No Touching
Straight from the depths of ‘duh’, comes this peculiar patent application for separation of electromagnetic interference-causing flight controllers and sensitive sensors that would be useless if in proximity of EM interference. DJI proposes to distance the guts of the controller from the sensor between 3 cm and up to 50 cm away, even if that means putting the sensor on a mast (or an “extension member”). According to the application, “operation of navigational, surveillance or […]
DJI’s Inspiring Patent Application
We’ve all oohed and awed over DJI’s Inspire’s 360-degree camera pan without the gear getting in the way of the shot, but did you know that the design can also “increase the functional space of a coupled payload”? From the reading of the patent application, the camera is only a part of what this thing can do. As the patent says, “existing unmanned aerial vehicle designs can be less than ideal for providing unobstructed viewing […]
Improved VTOL Coaxial Blades
The Osprey is a problematic animal. Not the bird, the aircraft. It took many years and 36 lives (to date) to design a tilt-propeller ship that can take off like a helicopter and fly like an airplane. What if there is a better design? King Abdullah of Jordan thinks so. A recently-granted US Patent discloses a VTOL vehicle that can take off like a helicopter and presumably fly like a plane. The design, using coaxial counter-rotating […]
UAS-In-A-Box Adapts to Various Missions
When you leave your base for the field and plan to use a long-range drone, you pack a long-range drone. It will have characteristics of a UAV designed for long, continuous flight and will be able to stay up for a while. However, it will have the maneuverability of a bucket of gravel. What if your mission parameters change in mid-stream, and you need a drone with way more pep, agility, and a smaller girth? […]
Micro-Drone Rolls, Flies, Gathers Intel
Although this looks like a toy called the “Sky Walker”, this drone is far from it. The Applicant, l’INSTITUT SUPERIEUR DE L’AERONAUTIQUE ET DE L’ESPACE, funded by the French Ministry of Defense, has invented a little drone to gather recon inside buildings. It was built as a “multi-mission microscale aerial vehicle. It comprises elements allowing a microscale aerial vehicle to move or roll across a surface, in particular on the ground, and making it capable […]