Unmanned aerial vehicle visual line of sight control

摘要

Methods, systems and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media for unmanned aerial vehicle visual line of sight flight operations. A UAV computer system may be configured to ensure the UAV is operating in visual line of sight of one or more ground operators. The UAV may confirm that it has a visual line of sight with the one or more user devices, such as a ground control station, or the UAV may ensure that the UAV does not fly behind or below a structure such that the ground operator would not be able to visually spot the UAV. The UAV computer system may be configured in such a way that UAV operation will maintain the UAV in visual line of sight of a base location.

主权项

1. A method, comprising:
obtaining a base location of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); obtaining an in-flight location of the UAV; determining, using a database of three-dimensional geographic features, a visual line of sight (VLOS) interruption between the base location and the in-flight location of the UAV; and in response to the determining, instructing the UAV to perform a contingency action, wherein the method is performed by one or more computer processors.