In the drilling world, sometimes you don’t drill straight down. If you need to create an underground passage for utilities under a road, river or obstacle, or to drink someone else’s milkshake, you can drill horizontally. How do you know if your cutting tool is at the right depth or on the right path? You […]
How can drones help society? Let me count the ways. For the linesmen who have to climb power-transmitting pylons in remote areas, this invention will be a lifesaver. Why climb when you can send a drone? This patent application relegates the most dangerous tasks to machines. Sharper Shape Ltd. of Helsinki proposes to mate ground […]
It’s been the talk of the town since Amazon ‘leaked’ its drone-delivery service, but in reading the patent application for this invention, there is plenty of room to maneuver around Amazon. The application is well-written as far as understanding the concept of drone delivery: “The final, or last mile delivery of physical items to a […]
It should come as no surprise that there will be an app store for drones soon. Third-party software may bring new and unexpected uses for the Inspire1 or the Solo. An unforeseen software glitch can be an issue. “An example issue is that a UAV can receive data or instructions from an unreliable program executing […]
In the early days of aviation, planes used pusher propellers. A pusher prop is typically behind the wing, and the concept probably came from boating, with the ship’s screws located on the stern to push the vessel through water. It took a few years for aerospace engineers to realize that puller props (mounted on the […]
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 […]
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 […]
From the Nightmare files, a flying claw has been patented. A drone is only as good as the clear space it’s flying through. When flying indoors, if the drone encounters an obstacle, game over, right? Not so, says Robert Marcus of Lafayette, CA. In his issued patent for a “Rotocraft”, Mr. Marcus has patented a […]
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 […]
Raytheon is no slouch when it comes to technology, and this is no exception: communicating with a drone for military applications is of prime importance. After all, that’s why you launched the UAV in the first place. The need for improved communication are ever-present: “Satellite transponders for military and/or commercial use are oversubscribed and expensive to put […]