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?

Here is a slightly confusing patent application that allows you to build modular custom platforms at will, depending on your needs. The application can explain much better than I can: “An example kit comprises one or more UAV fuselages, one or more sets of wings, and one or more sets of wingtips. The kit can further comprise one or more payloads, such as sensors and weapons. The kit can further comprise one or more power generation and storage systems, such as batteries, fuel cells, and generators. […] The ability to accommodate different wings can allow a UAV field-assembled from the kit to be optimized for a variety of different missions. For example, the kit can comprise three wing sets, with each set characterized by parameters such as length, chord, width, weight, and airfoil shape. Once the desired mission is known, the wing set providing the best performance for that mission profile can be selected from the kit and mounted with the fuselage. If the UAV is recovered in the field, it can be reconfigured for optimal performance on a subsequent mission by replacing the wing set. As examples, missions can vary in their requirement for time aloft, flight speed, altitude, load-carrying capacity, wing-based photovoltaic power generation capacity, etc. The ability to select wing configurations in the field can allow a single UAS kit to serve for multiple missions, without the need to supply, transport, and maintain multiple complete UAVs. Multiple wing sets can also allow continued operation of a UAV even if one wing set is damaged. At least one wing set can comprise wings with integrated photovoltaic generation capability.”

Claim 1 describes an invention not quite like in the Specification: “An unmanned aircraft system comprising one or more of:

• a launch and recovery module having a removeable rocket motor and a deployable parachute and removeably mounted with the unmanned aircraft system, a fuselage with a mounting feature and wings with mounting features configured to removeably engage the mounting feature on the fuselage, a 6 bladed propeller as described herein, photovoltaics mounted with the unmanned aircraft system, and wingtips removeably mounted with wings of the unmanned aircraft system.”

Query if one replaces the propeller with anything but 6 blades, will the Doctrine of Equivalents protect the patentee?

Title: “UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS”

US Patent Application Publication No: 20150203200

Filed (PCT): July 25, 2013

Published: July 23, 2015