Autonomous Drone Gesture Landing for Safe Hand Retrieval
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Solution Overview
Problem
Autonomous drones face challenges in safely landing without a controller, balancing battery life and power usage, and navigating in excessive winds, while being compact and user-friendly.
Innovation Solution
The autonomous drone recognizes user gestures, such as an open palm, to land safely and adjusts flight plans in response to excessive winds, ensuring safe retrieval and efficient power management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If autonomous drone landing without controller is implemented, then ease of operation is improved, but device complexity increases due to gesture recognition systems
Solution Approach 1:
The drone autonomously detects gestures and executes landing commands without requiring a remote controller. The system serves itself by using its own camera and processing capabilities to recognize hand gestures and automatically navigate to the gesture location for landing, eliminating the need for external control devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical remote control system with an optical gesture recognition system. Instead of using a physical controller with buttons and joysticks, the system uses a camera to capture visual gestures and processes them through image recognition algorithms to control drone flight and landing.
2Ease of operation
If gesture recognition system is added for controller-less operation, then ease of operation is improved, but use of energy increases due to additional sensors and processing
Solution Approach 1:
The drone's camera system serves multiple functions: it captures photographs for user requests, monitors the environment for gesture recognition, and assists in navigation. By making the camera multi-functional, the system avoids adding separate dedicated gesture sensors that would consume additional power.
Solution Approach 2:
The gesture recognition system operates periodically by capturing images at intervals and processing them to detect gestures. This periodic operation mode allows the system to balance between responsive gesture detection and power consumption, rather than continuously operating high-power sensors.
3Ease of operation
If drone size is reduced for portability, then ease of operation is improved, but reliability decreases due to limited thrust and battery capacity
Solution Approach 1:
The drone identifies and navigates to the user's gesture location before attempting to land. This preliminary navigation ensures the drone reaches a safe, controlled position near the user before initiating landing, rather than attempting to land immediately which could be unsafe in windy conditions or limited space.
Solution Approach 2:
The system continuously monitors the drone's position relative to the detected gesture and adjusts its flight path accordingly. The feedback loop ensures the drone maintains proper positioning and orientation during approach and landing, compensating for environmental factors like wind that could affect a small drone's stability.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems, computer readable medium and methods for landing an autonomous drone with gestures are disclosed. Example methods include lifting off the autonomous drone in response to an instruction from a person, receiving sensor data, and processing the sensor data to identify a gesture from the person that indicates that the autonomous drone is to land. The autonomous drone recognizes a gesture from a person to land where the gesture is based on a physical movement of the person. In response, the autonomous drone navigates to land the autonomous drone. In some examples, the person presents an open palm to the autonomous drone which causes the autonomous drone to fly to and land on the open palm. In some examples, the person places a hand under the autonomous drone which causes the autonomous drone to land. In some examples, the autonomous drone responds to the person that launched the autonomous drone.