ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,474,716, issued on Nov. 18, was assigned to NTT Inc. (Tokyo).
"Unmanned aerial vehicle and control method therefor" was invented by Daisuke Uchibori (Tokyo), Yujin Hamano (Tokyo), Masafumi Nakagawa (Tokyo) and Atsushi Aratake (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided is a crewless aircraft capable of accurately estimating its own position even inside a manhole, as well as a crewless aircraft control method. A crewless aircraft according to the present invention is a crewless aircraft used to inspect an interior of a manhole, and includes: a camera sensor that captures an image of a manhole opening; a plurality of rangefinders that m...