Back in March 2018 Patently Apple posted a report titled "Samsung's newly Granted Design Patents Suggest the Company is Eying the Smart Drone Market." The report covered two design patents. Samsung was granted a third drone design patent on April 11th and a fourth on April 24th. Yesterday Samsung's first utility patent application for a drone was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office showing that their intention to develop a drone is a serious project.
Samsung's patent application begins with an overview stating that unmanned aerial vehicles have been developed and utilized for military purposes for information collection and reconnaissance in areas where user access is difficult. The unmanned aerial vehicle has recently been equipped with an image capturing features (cameras) resulting in the commercialization and popularization of the unmanned aerial vehicles.
Although large propellers may improve flight performance of the unmanned aerial vehicle, there may be a structural constraint in which a size of the main body for accommodating the arm is increased along with an increase in a size of the propeller. When the main body of the unmanned aerial vehicle is large in size, a center of gravity is not concentrated and air resistance is increased, and thus flight performance may deteriorate.
Samsung's invention is to solve the problems outlined in their opening statement above.
The invention provides a transformable drone in which an arm for fixing a propeller can be folded and unfolded against a main body (or an airframe) which may provide a transformable unmanned aerial vehicle which combines portability and flight performance through a transformable main body (or an airframe).
Samsung's invention covers an unmanned aerial vehicle that includes a housing structure, a wireless communication circuit to be in wireless communication with an external controller, a plurality of propulsions systems coupled to the housing, and a navigation circuit configured to control the plurality of propulsion systems.
At least one of the propulsion systems will include a plurality of folding arms pivotally coupled to one of the first housing structure and the second housing structure, a motor controlled by the navigation circuit, and a propeller coupled to the motor. In both of the first housing structure and the second housing structure, the housing is configured to have a first length in a first state and have a second length longer than the first length in a second state, the housing has at least one recess to accommodate at least part of the plurality of propulsion systems in the second state, and the unmanned aerial vehicle is configured to fly by using the plurality of propulsion systems located outside the recess in the first state.
In addition the Samsung drone will incorporate an electronic speed control (ESC) module, at least one camera, a multitude of sensors (illumination, UV, ultrasonic, compass, barometer, gyro, gesture, acceleration and more), rechargeable battery and/or a solar battery.
The controller, illustrated in patent FIG. 10 may display internal system information (#1020) of the unmanned aerial vehicle, received from the unmanned aerial vehicle, and/or surrounding environment information (#1030) of a current location of the unmanned aerial vehicle (e.g., weather, temperature, wind speed, etc.) on the display (#1000).
The controller (#910) may further display a UI (#1040) in a steering mode on the display so that a user can steer the unmanned aerial vehicle. The UI in the steering mode may include a left-joystick (#1041) capable of controlling a throttle and yaw of the unmanned aerial vehicle and a right-joystick (#1042) capable of controlling a pitch and roll of the unmanned aerial vehicle.
One of the key aspects of Samsung's design is how it could be folded and transformed into its "storage state as presented in patent FIG. 7A illustrated below.
Samsung's patent application that was made public this week was actually filed in the U.S. back on June 7th. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.
While the patent stays neutral about commercial or military drones, save for their introductory statement, Samsung is always playing up their military grade security. It should be noted that Samsung's US CIO was in fact a former CIO for the U.S. Department of Defense as revealed in a report by IT World Canada. The image below of Samsung's Knox platform is from that report. Could it apply to a drone? Yes, of course.
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