There is provided a drone system in which a drone and a movable body operate in coordination with each other, the movable body being capable of moving with the drone aboard and allowing the drone to make a takeoff and a landing, the movable body including: a takeoff-landing area on which the drone can be placed and that serves as a takeoff-landing point from and on which the drone takes off and lands; a movement control section capable of moving the movable body together with the drone aboard; and a movable body transmission section that sends information on the movable body, the drone including: a flight control section that causes the drone to fly; and a drone reception section that receives information on the movable body, wherein the drone sends, to the movable body, a position of a takeoff-landing point at a time when the drone takes off.

A method of controlling flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) includes collecting, while the UAV traverses a flight path, a set of images corresponding to different fields of view of an environment around the UAV using multiple image capture devices, extracting one or more image features from the set of images, constructing a map of the environment using one or more selected image features from the one or more image features, and generating a return path for the UAV using the map of the environment. Each of the multiple image capture devices includes one of the different fields of view.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for determining that current data captured at a current location of a drone satisfies localization adjustment criteria; in response to determining that the current data captured at the current location of the drone satisfies the localization adjustment criteria, identifying previously captured image data; determining a previous expected location of the drone based on both an expected change in location of the drone and a first previous location determined from other image data captured before the previously captured image data; determining a location difference between the previous expected location of the drone and a second previous location determined from the previously captured image data; and determining the current location of the drone based on the location difference.

A supervision method for a flight state of an unmanned aerial vehicle includes respectively establishing communication connections with the unmanned aerial vehicle and a supervision server, receiving identity information about the unmanned aerial vehicle and flight information about the unmanned aerial vehicle sent by the unmanned aerial vehicle, automatically sending the identity information about the unmanned aerial vehicle and the flight information to the supervision server in an on-line mode, receiving at least one of a flight restriction instruction or warning information sent by the supervision server, and forwarding the flight restriction instruction to the unmanned aerial vehicle, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle executes the flight restriction instruction, thereby restricting flight behaviour of the unmanned aerial vehicle in an on-line flight mode via the flight restriction instruction.

A supervision method for a flight state of an unmanned aerial vehicle includes respectively establishing communication connections with the unmanned aerial vehicle and a supervision server, receiving identity information about the unmanned aerial vehicle and flight information about the unmanned aerial vehicle sent by the unmanned aerial vehicle, automatically sending the identity information about the unmanned aerial vehicle and the flight information to the supervision server in an on-line mode, receiving at least one of a flight restriction instruction or warning information sent by the supervision server, and forwarding the flight restriction instruction to the unmanned aerial vehicle, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle executes the flight restriction instruction, thereby restricting flight behaviour of the unmanned aerial vehicle in an on-line flight mode via the flight restriction instruction.

A flight control method includes displaying a user interface configured to receive an operation instruction including coordinates of waypoints, generating route data of a route based on the coordinates of the waypoints, sending the route data to an aircraft to instruct the aircraft to execute the route, recording an interruption point during execution of the route by the aircraft, displaying a plurality of candidate starting points including at least one of the interruption point, a last waypoint of the route before the interruption point, a next waypoint of the route after the interruption point, or a user-designated waypoint, in response to a selection instruction, selecting a target starting point from the plurality of candidate starting points, and controlling the aircraft in an interrupted state to fly to the target starting point and resume the execution of the route from the target starting point.

An inventory management system managing a plurality of inventory items stored in a storage area. The inventory management system includes an autonomous vehicle configured to move within the storage area and a computing device communicatively coupled to the autonomous vehicle. The autonomous vehicle includes a beacon configured to facilitate detection of a current position of the autonomous vehicle based on signal triangulation, a sensor configured to detect information indicative of a number of inventory items at the current position of the autonomous vehicle, and a wireless data link configured to transmit a signal indicative of the number of inventory items. The computing device may detect a position of the autonomous vehicle based on the signal transmitted from the beacon, and update an inventory of the storage area based on the signal indicative of the number of inventory items.

A method for reporting flight path information includes: determining content of flight path information of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) including at least one of a path positioning point of the UAV, the flight speed of the UAV and the flight altitude of the UAV, the reporting time of the flight path information of the UAV, and the position and altitude of the UAV when the flight path information of the UAV is reported; and reporting, through radio resource control (RRC) signalling, the flight path information of the UAV to the base station. By determining the content of the flight path information of the UAV, and reporting the flight path information of the UAV to the base station by means of RRC signalling, the base station can determine flight-related information according to the content so as to prepare for handover in advance.

A method for controlling an aircraft, in particular a VTOL multirotor aircraft, in which flight influencing units of the aircraft a) are supplied with control commands via a first/control channel from a first computer (COM), which control commands originate or are derived from a pilot input (PE), and b) the control commands are monitored by a second/monitoring channel and a second computer (MON), which checks whether the control commands are suitable for a given physical state of the aircraft and the pilot input, c) the second computer determines whether a current navigation state of the aircraft coincides with the pilot input, which has been transformed into a desired navigation state of the aircraft, preferably by the second computer, within a prescribed deviation, and d) a control signal for controlling the aircraft is generated in dependence on a determination result of step c).

A method for assisting with the navigation of a fleet of vehicles including a main vehicle and a secondary vehicle that is mobile in relation to the main vehicle, the method including receiving relative movement data, acquired by one or more sensors, between the main vehicle and the secondary vehicle, estimating a navigation status of the fleet of vehicles by an invariant Kalman filter using the received data as observations, the navigation status including first variables representing a first rigid transformation linking a location mark associated with the main vehicle to a reference point, and second variables representing a second rigid transformation linking a location mark associated with the main vehicle to a location mark associated with the secondary vehicle, the invariant Kalman filter using, as an internal composition law, a law including a term-by term composition of the first rigid transformation and the second rigid transformation.