Verity AG

A system comprising, a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles and a single controller for controlling said plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, wherein the single controller is configured such that it can broadcast a command to all of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles so that each of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles receive the same command; and wherein each of the unmanned aerial vehicles comprise a memory which stores a plurality of predefined flight paths each of which is assigned to a respective command; and wherein each of the unmanned aerial vehicles comprise a processor which can, (i) receive a command which has been broadcasted by the single controller to said plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, (ii) retrieve from the memory of that aerial vehicle the flight path which is assigned in the memory to that command, and (iii) operate the aerial vehicle to follow the retrieved flight path. There is further provided a corresponding method of controlling a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles.

A method of taking a measurement using a sensor mounted on an aerial vehicle, the aerial vehicle having one or more propellers and one or more motors which are selectively operable to drive the one or more propellers to rotate to cause the vehicle to fly, and a sensor mounted on the aerial vehicle, the method comprising the steps of, operating the one or more motors to drive the one or more propellers to cause the vehicle to fly; at a first time instant, slowing down or turning off said one or more motors; while the one or more motors are slowed down or turned off, taking a measurement using said sensor; at a second time instant, which is after the measurement has been taken using the sensor, operating the one or more motors again to drive the one or more propellers to cause the vehicle to fly. There is further provided a corresponding aerial vehicle.

A method for determining a state of a localizing apparatus in an indoor environment having N pre-arranged landmarks. The method includes receiving the positions of the N pre-arranged landmarks; receiving a first image, and a second image; receiving positions of n currently mapped simultaneous-localization-and-mapping (SLAM) landmarks; determining positions of at least one feature in the first image, and determining an injective mapping estimate from the at least one features into the set of N pre-arranged landmarks; determining positions of at least one SLAM feature in the second image, and determining a first SLAM injective mapping estimate from at least one SLAM features into the set of the n currently mapped SLAM landmarks; using the determined injective mapping estimate and the determined first SLAM injective mapping estimate to determine the state of the localizing apparatus and to update the positions of the n currently mapped SLAM landmarks. A computer program product comprising instructions which when executed by a computer, cause the computer to carry out the method; and an assembly having controller which is configured to carry out the method.

A flying machine storage container is provided that comprises multiple charging stations and a clamping mechanism. The clamping mechanism is configured to secure flying machines in the charging stations and securely close charging circuits between the storage container and the flying machines. A system for launching flying machines is also provided. The system comprises two regions and a transition region between the two regions. The two regions each constrain the positioning of a flying machine and the transition region enables a flying machine to move from the first region to the second region to reach an exit. A flying machine having sufficient performance capabilities will be able to successfully launch. Centralized and decentralized communication architectures are also provided for communicating data between a central control system, multiple storage containers, and multiple stored flying machines stored at each of the storage containers.

The invention relates to a method for determining a state x k of a localizing apparatus at a time t. the state x k being a realization of a state random variable x k . The position and orientation of a camera, e.g., mounted on a drone as an example of a localizing apparatus, may be used for determining a state of the localizing apparatus, and the state may be tracked over time. Existing methods for determining the state of a localizing apparatus do not provide an adequate level of accuracy, however, thus making them insufficient for use in many applications. It is an object of the present invention to mitigate at least some of the disadvantages associated with the methods for determining a state x k of a localizing apparatus known from the state of the art.

A method for calibrating a detection range of one or more sensors that are within a predefined coordinate system. The method includes moving an object along a trajectory, wherein the trajectory comprises at least a first physical location which is within a predefined estimate of the detection range of the one or more sensors, and at least a second physical location which is outside of the predefined estimate of the detection range of the one or more sensors; determining the physical location of the object, over time, within the predefined coordinate system; operating the one or more sensors to detect, wherein when the one or more sensors are operated to detect they provide an output, and the output will indicate the presence of the object if the object is within a detection range of the one or more sensors; identifying a time instant (t 2 , t 4 ) at which the one or more sensors no longer detect the object, and/or, identifying a time instant (t 1 ,t 3 ) at which the one or more sensors begin to detect the object; determining the detection range of the one or more sensors using the physical location of the object at a time instant (t 2 , t 4 ) corresponding to the identified time instant (t 2 , t 4 ) at which the one or more sensors no longer detect the object, and/or, determining the detection range of the one or more sensors using the physical location of the object 102 at a time instant (t 1 , t 3 ) corresponding to the identified time instant (t 1 , t 3 ) at which the one or more sensors begin to detect the object. There is further provided methods for testing a sensor that can measure distance, and methods for testing an optical beam smoke detector.

Systems and methods are provided for determining obstacle-free paths of an areal vehicle in a warehouse and for determining shortcuts to be generated in the warehouse to increase the number of obstacle-free paths available to the areal vehicle. The systems and methods include predicting at least one location of an inventory moving device in the warehouse based on the status of received inventory moving tasks, and determining an obstacle-free path of an aerial vehicle to a desired location in the warehouse based on the predicted at least one location of the inventory moving device. The systems and methods also include receiving inventory validation tasks in a warehouse comprising a plurality of storage racks, requesting, based on the received inventory validation tasks, a shortcut to be generated in a storage rack of the plurality of storage racks to provide a path segment for performing the inventory validation task.

According to the present invention there is provided a method of taking a measurement using a sensor mounted on an aerial vehicle, the aerial vehicle having one or more propellers and one or more motors which are selectively operable to drive the one or more propellers to rotate to cause the vehicle to fly, and a sensor mounted on the aerial vehicle, the method comprising the steps of, operating the one or more motors to drive the one or more propellers to cause the vehicle to fly; at a first time instant, slowing down or turning off said one or more motors; while the one or more motors are slowed down or turned off, taking a measurement using said sensor; at a second time instant, which is after the measurement has been taken using the sensor, operating the one or more motors again to drive the one or more propellers to cause the vehicle to fly. There is further provided a corresponding aerial vehicle.

A method for calibrating a camera which is in a position and orientation within a predefined coordinate system. The method includes the steps of, (a) moving an object along a trajectory within the predefined coordinate system and within a field of view of the camera; (b) determining the physical location of the object, over time, within the predefined coordinate system; (c) capturing one or more images of the object using the camera as the object is moving along the trajectory; (d) recording the time instant at which each of the respective one or more images are captured; (e) processing each of the one or more images to determine the location of the object in the each of the one or more images, to provide an respective image location for each of respective image; (f) for each of the one or more images, determining a respective expected image location of the object in that image, wherein the expected image location is determined using an initial predefined estimate of camera parameters and the physical location of the object 104 in the predefined coordinate system at the time instant corresponding to the time instant said respective image was captured; (g) optimizing estimates of camera parameters of the camera and/or optimizing an estimate of the position of the camera and/or optimizing an estimate of the orientation of the camera, by minimizing reprojection errors for each of said one or more images, wherein the reprojection error of a respective image is the difference between the expected image location of the object for that image and the image location of the object in said image. There is further provided methods for determining and methods for estimating, a physical location of a subject located within a predefined coordinate system, and methods for tracking the position of a subject, each of which use at least one camera which have been calibrated using the aforementioned method for calibrating a camera.

A self-localizing apparatus uses timestampable signals transmitted by transceivers that are a part of a distributed localization system to compute its position relative to the transceivers. Transceivers and self-localizing apparatuses are arranged for highly accurate timestamping using digital and analog reception and transmission electronics as well as one or more highly accurate clocks, compensation units, localization units, position calibration units, scheduling units, or synchronization units. Transceivers and self-localizing apparatuses are further arranged to allow full scalability in the number of self-localizing apparatuses and to allow robust self-localization with latencies and update rates useful for high performance applications such as autonomous mobile robot control.