ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,292,520, issued on May 6, was assigned to SKYDIO INC. (San Mateo, Calif.).
"Low-light and no-light aerial navigation" was invented by Anurag Makineni (San Jose, Calif.), Kristen Marie Holtz (Redwood City, Calif.), Gareth Benoit Cross (San Carlos, Calif.) and Hayk Martirosyan (San Francisco).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In some examples, an aerial vehicle may determine, based on sensor information received from at least one onboard sensor, that an amount of light fails to satisfy a light threshold. Based at least in part on determining that the amount of light fails to satisfy the light threshold, the aerial vehicle is caused to takeoff ...