Selection of an alternate destination in response to a contingency event

Inventors

Durno, Carter • Saunders, Jeffery • Bosworth, William R.

Assignees

Aurora Flight Sciences Corp

Abstract

A method is provided for supporting a robot in response to a contingency event. The method includes detecting the contingency event during travel of the robot on a route to a destination. In response, the method includes determining a position of the robot, and accessing information about alternate destinations associated with the route. The method includes selecting an alternate destination from the alternate destinations based on a time to travel from the position of the robot to the alternate destination, and the information. And the method includes outputting an indication of the alternate destination for use in at least one of guidance, navigation or control of the robot to the alternate destination.

Core Innovation

The invention supports an autonomous or unmanned vehicle in response to a contingency event detected while the vehicle travels on a route prior to reaching a landing zone at an initial destination. In response to detecting the contingency event prior to reaching the landing zone, the apparatus determines a position of the autonomous or unmanned vehicle and accesses information about alternate destinations associated with the route, where the alternate destinations are at locations different from the initial destination and the information includes one or more contingency routes to the alternate destinations.

The apparatus selects an alternate destination from the alternate destinations based on a time to travel from the position of the autonomous or unmanned vehicle to the alternate destination using the accessed alternate-destination and route information. After selecting the alternate destination, the apparatus selects a highest ranked one of a contingency route from the contingency routes associated with the selected alternate destination and outputs an indication of the selected alternate destination for use in at least one of guidance, navigation, or control of the autonomous or unmanned vehicle to the alternate destination.

The invention constrains the position-based selection by representing route and/or space using route segments, volume segments, a Voronoi tessellation with cells, and/or a k-dimensional tree with nearest neighbor search. It also constrains contingency-route selection using a lookup table mapping route segments and/or volume segments to contingency routes, and it ranks multiple contingency routes using a cost metric and a feasibility constraint for landing.

Claims Coverage

The document contains two independent claims, apparatus and method, each centered on detecting a contingency event prior to reaching an initial landing zone and selecting an alternate destination and contingency route using position and a time-to-travel metric, followed by outputting an indication usable for guidance, navigation, or control. The independent claim set is further narrowed by dependent claims specifying how position is represented, how alternate destinations and contingency routes are stored, and how contingency routes are ranked and constrained for landing.

Across the independent apparatus and method claims, the core coverage is the same: detect a contingency event before reaching the initial landing zone, determine the vehicle position, select an alternate destination using time to travel and associated alternate-destination and contingency-route information, choose a highest ranked contingency route for that destination, and output an indication for guidance, navigation, or control to route the vehicle to the selected alternate destination. Dependent claims further define how position-to-destination mapping and route ranking and feasibility are performed.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications

No documented applications found