A delivery drone flying with a cityscape
Attempts to use drones for commercial package delivery are being tackled by the likes of Amazon, Uber and UPS, however, the usage of drones in the logistics sector primarily depends on tentative operative procedures.
For that reason, International Business Machines Corp (IBM) , has submitted a patent for a complete technical and operative model for the purpose of delivering selected goods with a drone. The design is a drone system that’s optimized by a computers.
The system is made up of a controller, processor or a computer mounted on the aerial drone, that receives readings from sensors it is connected to, the sensors detect flight conditions while the the drone moves from one location to another.
Based on the data returned by these sensors, the drone on-board computer can switch the power system of the drone by disengaging an electric motor and engaging an internal combustion engine in its place, to power the propellers.
The computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program code embodied in itself is used to govern the responses and range of actions undertaken to different data returned by the sensors or receivers, the program code is readable and executable by a processor or computer installed on the drone.
The sensors and computer installed on the drone continuously adjust the drone’s flight characteristics based on any aerial obstacles encountered. But although the obstacle avoidance is actuated in real time, a flight configuration is developed after one flight of the drone, making obstacles expected for the next flight, saving processing time and power.
In addition to sensors, a camera is also mounted on the drone, so the processor has to receive data from sensors as well as continuously process data from the camera with image processing. The obstacle could, in many cases, be a flock of birds. In order to deal with a flock of birds, a speaker is installed in the drone.
Upon detection of a flock of birds, the speaker emits a tone between 1 kHz to 4 kHz to disperse the flock. The sensors installed do not only detect obstacles and other aircrafts to avoid crash, they also monitor weather conditions.
The flight characteristics of the drone are also adjusted according to any weather change between the two locations the drone is supposed to fly through.
Patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180290759A1/en