Agricultural machines utilize global positioning systems (GPS) to acquire the location of the machine as well as the location of an event, which may be based upon an operation of the agricultural machine. Because of the possibility of outage and/or inaccuracy of the GPS, a GPS augmentation system can be included with the agricultural machine. The GPS augmentation system can supplement the location determination of the GPS, or can be used in place of the GPS when the GPS is not available. An unmanned vehicle can also be used as part of the augmentation system to provide additional information for the location of the agricultural machine and/or the event.

In a network of autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles, an alert may be triggered when one of the vehicles switches from autonomous to manual mode. The alert may be communicated to nearby autonomous vehicles so that drivers of those vehicles may become aware of a potentially unpredictable manual driver nearby. Drivers of autonomous vehicles who may have become disengaged (e.g., sleeping, reading, talking, etc.) during autonomous driving may become re-engaged upon noticing the alert. A re-engaged driver may choose to switch his/her own vehicle from autonomous to manual mode in order to appropriately react to an unpredictable nearby manual driver. In additional or alternative embodiments, the alert may be triggered or intensified when indications of impairment of a nearby driver or malfunction of a nearby vehicle are detected.

Physical and logical components of a long line loiter control system address control of a long line loiter maneuver conducted beneath a carrier, such as a fixed-wing aircraft. Control may comprise identifying, predicting, and reacting to estimated states and predicted states of the carrier, a suspended load control system, and a long line. Identifying, predicting, and reacting to estimated states and predicted states may comprise determining characteristics of state conditions over time as well as response time between state conditions. Reacting may comprise controlling a hoist of the carrier, controlling thrusters of the suspended load control system, and or controlling or issuing flight control instructions to the carrier so as not to increase the response time and or to avoid a hazard.

A method using a system and a system having at least one autonomous vehicle, with the autonomous vehicle having at least one drive, at least one brake, and at least one steering, with the vehicle having a navigation system, with the navigation system having a first radio receiver for a global navigation satellite system and a second radio receiver for a global navigation satellite system, with the first radio receiver and the second radio receiver being arranged at a predefined spacing on the vehicle, with the navigation system having a control and evaluation unit to which the first radio receiver and the second radio receiver are connected, with the control and evaluation unit having two independent processor units, with the control and evaluation unit being configured to evaluate the position data of the first radio receiver and the position data of the second radio receiver using both processor units and to compare them with one another, and with the control and evaluation unit being configured to generate checked position data on a valid agreement of the position data.

Thrust values for motors in an aircraft are generated where each flight controller in a plurality of flight controllers generates a thrust value for each motor in a plurality of motors using an optimization problem with a single solution. Each flight controller in the plurality of flight controllers passes one of the generated thrust values to a corresponding motor in the plurality of motors, where other generated thrust values for that flight controller terminate at that flight controller. The plurality of motors perform the passed thrust values.

Blended operator and autonomous control in an autonomous vehicle, including: receiving sensor data from a plurality of sensors of an autonomous vehicle; determining, based on the sensor data, a degree of autonomous control for each control input of a plurality of control inputs; and applying the degree of autonomous control for each control input of the plurality of control inputs.

Continued and precise operation of an agricultural implement exists even where a subsystem, such as a GPS receiver, wireless communicator, a sensor, or the like, fails, falters, or is otherwise unusable. Data is continually tracked to the extent possible during failure or faltering and is temporarily stored. To continue operations during periods of unavailability, a representation of planted ground is anticipated by other agricultural implements and/or calculated with agricultural data from other agricultural implements. Normal operations then continue until data sync can catch back up to real-time.

A control system an unmanned vehicle includes a first processing unit configured to execute a primary autopilot process for controlling the unmanned vehicle. The control system further includes a programmable logic array in operative communication with the first processing unit. The control system also includes a state machine configured in the programmable logic array. The state machine is configured to enable control of the unmanned vehicle according to a backup autopilot process in response to an invalid output of the first processing unit.

A system for safely operating an automated vehicle includes a first network including a sensor set comprising a plurality of sensors configured to detect the surroundings of the vehicle. The sensor set is coupled to a high-performance electronic control unit (ECU) configured to process the signals of the sensors for orientation, control, and collision avoidance. The system further includes a secure motion-control ECU redundantly coupled to at least one drive element via at least two control signals for controlling the vehicle. The high-performance ECU is configured to output an object recognition indicator signal for orientation, control, and collision avoidance to the motion-control ECU. The system also includes a second, hierarchical, redundant network for safely operating the vehicle. The motion-control ECU is designed to securely evaluate the signals of a human/remote-machine interface (HMI/RMI), a ground truth sensing device, and a perception-safety ECU for the recognition of an emergency state.

A control system is configured to: transmit a verification request signal to a remote device; listen for a verification request reply signal transmitted from the remote device in response to the verification request signal being transmitted; listen for a remote device state signal transmitted from the remote device providing remote device state information indicating in which predefined state the remote device is currently operating, the operation information based on the remote device state information; determine whether information comprised by the verification request reply signal includes expected operation result information being operation result information corresponding to an expected result of the operation defined by the operation information; and control, or provide input to the system to control, motion of the vehicle in response to the motion control signal received from the remote device based on a correspondence between the received operation result information and the expected operation result information.