ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,428,147, issued on Sept. 30, was assigned to Skydio Inc. (San Mateo, Calif.).
"Unmanned aerial vehicle inspection system" was invented by Mark Patrick Bauer (San Francisco), Bernard J. Michini (San Francisco) and Brett Michael Bethke (Millbrae, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A portion of a vertical structure is determined for inspection by an unmanned aerial vehicle. A flight plan including safe locations around the vertical structure is determined. Each of the safe locations is associated with a respective column of waypoints. The unmanned aerial vehicle navigates according to the flight plan by navigating to a first safe locati...