Drones Navigate RFID Highway

As more and more UAVs clutter the sky, navigation becomes a real issue. Delivery by drone sparks some of these questions: how do you prevent collisions? Optimize efficiency? Keep track of inventory? Certainly, GPS-borne navigation is the flavor du jour, but it’s not the only nav protocol.

Along comes Azure Sky Group LLC, and their patent application for radio frequency identification (RFID) method. RFID is nothing new, and most new credit cards have a chip that works on RFID. You have to bring the credit card in proximity of the tap-and-pay terminal for the chip to  to wake up and relay information.

This is the concept for the present patent application: the drone follows a route laid out by RFID signals. “The drone may include: a navigation unit configured to determine the location of the drone and navigate the drone to designated locations; a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader configured to read RFID tag information from RFID tags; and a wireless network transceiver configured to periodically transmit the location of the drone and RFID tag information to an inventory management system. […] the drone further includes: a memory configured to store pre-defined location information for a plurality of RFID tags, wherein the RFID reader is configured to read information from at least one of the RFID tags; and a processor configured to compare the location information from the navigation unit with the pre-defined location information of the read tag. […] providing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone having a wireless repeater, the wireless repeater configured to connect to a wireless network; determining a location of a service disruption in the wireless network; programming the UAV to fly to a pre-determined elevation level; and forwarding wireless communications from the UAV to a wireless receiver in the wireless network using the wireless repeater. The wireless repeater may be a microwave transmitter and the wireless receiver is a microwave receiver located on a tower of the wireless network.”

Claim 1 is quite broad, so we’ll see how it is cut down by the Examiner in Prosecution:

Claim 1: A drone comprising:

• a navigation unit configured to determine the location of the drone and navigate the drone to designated locations;
• a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader configured to read RFID tag information from RFID tags;
• and a wireless network transceiver configured to periodically transmit the location of the drone and RFID tag information to an inventory management system.