Amazons’ recent patent talks about: Commercial and general aircraft avoidance using acoustic pattern recognition

Amazon.com, commonly known as Amazon, is an American electronic commerce and cloud computing company that was founded on July 5, 1994, by Jeff Bezos and is based in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest Internet-based retailer in the world by total sales and market capitalization. Amazon.com started as an online bookstore, later diversifying to sell DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audiobook downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry. The company also produces consumer electronics notably, Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo and is the world’s largest provider of cloud infrastructure services. Amazon also sells certain low-end products like USB cables under its in-house brand AmazonBasics.

BACKGROUND

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have become relatively common among hobbyists, commercial entities (e.g., aerial photography), and military users. These aerial vehicles generally operate at low altitudes where air traffic is busiest and most unpredictable. For example, take-off and landing of commercial aircraft, test flights, private pilot activity, hobbyists, balloons and blimps, aerial advertising, float planes, emergency responders and other UAVs may be more likely to be present within the UAV’s airspace. A UAV, operating autonomously or under the control of an operator must actively avoid interference with other objects, both moving and stationary, that are present within the UAV’s airspace.

Aircraft avoidance system

Aircraft collision avoidance systems (ACAS) and aircraft separation assurance systems (ASAS) are intended to operate independently of a ground-based air traffic controllers. Several systems are commonly used onboard manned aircraft to avoid collisions and maintain aircraft separation, for example, airborne radar and traffic collision avoidance systems. However, these systems are often heavy, expensive, and/or rely on active interrogation of the transponder of aircraft in the vicinity of the aircraft conducting the interrogation.
Lighter systems are generally passive and rely on transmission of transponder information from nearby aircraft, thereby only passively preventing an interaction between aircraft in the vicinity of the transmitting air vehicle. In some instances, an object may not be equipped with a transponder and therefore would be invisible to passive detection using these techniques. Additionally, in the busiest and most unpredictable airspace, i.e., low altitudes, manned air vehicles typically rely on the pilot and Air Traffic Controllers to prevent interactions and maintain adequate separation between aircraft.

About Patent 9,685,089;

This disclosure is directed to a detection and avoidance apparatus for an unmanned aerial vehicle (“UAV”) and systems, devices, and techniques pertaining to automated object detection and avoidance during UAV flight. The system may detect objects within the UAV’s airspace through acoustic, visual, infrared, multispectral, hyperspectral, or object detectable signal emitted or reflected from an object. The system may identify the source of the object detectable signal by comparing features of the received signal with known sources signals in a database. The features may include, for example, an acoustic signature emitted or reflected by the objet. Furthermore, a trajectory envelope for the object may be determined based on characteristic performance parameters for the object such as cursing speed, maneuverability, etc. The UAV may determine an optimized flight plan based on the trajectory envelopes of detected objects within the UAV’s air-space.

Conclusion

This patent in general terms is concerned with the Amazons new project about drone delivery system, so that the, delivering drones do not collide with the aircraft or come in the same air traffic lines. When an object is present in the outermost monitored airspace region, the detection zone, the UAV may constantly monitor low-fidelity operating characteristics of the object such as relative position and/or trajectory. When an object moves into the innermost airspace region, the active monitoring zone, the UAV may constantly monitor characteristics of the object with a higher degree of fidelity. For example, the UAV may maintain at least an active position of the object, a trajectory of the object, and/or a trajectory envelope for the detected object.