Might Apple make its own drone? A new patent (number US 11929802 B2) for “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Communication” hints at it — and it’s one of several such patents.
About the patent
In the patent Apple says that urrent remote control (RC) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are controlled with a point-to-point radio link in line-of-sight range. This reduces, in many examples, the fly area to within about a few hundred meters of the controller. This limits the use cases of RC UAVs as the operation range is limited.
In order to expand the use, a non-line-of-sight control mechanism can help. However, Apple says that omni-directional antennas currently present on UAVs don’t work well in the sky as the UAVs are subject to signals from multiple base-stations causing strong interference. Apple says that a UAV with a configurable antenna array could be a solution.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “An unmanned aerial vehicle can be configured to adjust a beam direction, provide path information, act as a base station, act as a cluster head, include an improved directional antenna or array of directional antennas, communicate in a collaboration using belief propagation, receive communications from a serving station aiding in navigation or improved signal performance, or the like.”
