Patents Assigned to Parrot
  • Patent number: 11117661
    Abstract: The rotary wing drone comprises at least one rotor carried by a drone structure, wherein the drone structure comprises a drone body and at least one group of arms comprising a plurality of arms rotatably mounted on the drone body about the same axis of rotation, between a deployed position for flight and a folded position for transport.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 7, 2018
    Date of Patent: September 14, 2021
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventor: Christine Caubel
  • Patent number: 10721528
    Abstract: A system and method for provision of global audience profiling and prediction concerning broadcast and streaming media from disparate data sources. The system facilitates the input of an unlimited number of data sources from online and offline origins including social media and other user generated content web sites. The system identifies key words related to sentiment, topic, and audience attribute. The system then uses a multi-task learning procedure to determine the response for each source and finally to generalize across all sources thus linking a specific audience with identifiable characteristics to a response concerning broadcast or streaming media.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 22, 2017
    Date of Patent: July 21, 2020
    Assignee: Parrot Analytics Limited
    Inventors: Sione K. Palu, Arturas Vedrickas, Johan Chan, Wared Seger
  • Patent number: 10491272
    Abstract: The drone comprises M antennas, with in particular two offset antennas located symmetrically at the ends of two arms for the connection to the propulsion units (24), and a ventral antenna under the drone body. The radio transmission is operated simultaneously on N similar RF channels, with 2?N<M. An antenna switching circuit couples selectively each of the N RF channels to N antennas out of the M antennas according to a plurality of different coupling schemes, dynamically through a piloting logic selecting one of the coupling schemes. The selection is operated as a function of a signal delivered by the drone-borne microprocessor, as a function of the flight and signal transmission conditions, determined at a given instant.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 27, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 26, 2019
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventors: Eric Gasnier, Raphaël Prod'Homme
  • Patent number: 10322819
    Abstract: The displacements of the drone are defined by piloting commands to take moving images of a target carrying the ground station. The system comprises means for adjusting the sight angle of the camera during the displacements of the drone and of the target, so that the images are centerd to the target, and means for generating flying instructions so that the distance between drone and target fulfills determined rules, these means being based on a determination of the GPS geographical position of the target with respect to the GPS geographical position of the drone, and of the angular position of the target with respect to a main axis of the drone. These means are also based on the analysis of a non-geographical signal produced by the target and received by the drone. The system allows freeing from the uncertainty of the GPS systems equipping this type of device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 22, 2017
    Date of Patent: June 18, 2019
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventors: Laure Chevalley, Edouard Leurent
  • Patent number: 10326939
    Abstract: The drone comprises a camera, an inertial unit measuring the drone angles, and an extractor module delivering data of an image area (ZI) of reduced size defined inside a capture area (ZC) of the sensor. A feedback-control module dynamically modifies the position and the orientation of the image area inside the capture area, in a direction opposite to that of the angle variations measured by the inertial unit. The sensor may operate according to a plurality of different configurations able to be dynamically selected, with a base configuration using a base capture area (ZCB) for low values of roll angle (?), and at least one degraded mode configuration using an extended capture area (ZCE) of greater size than the base capture area (ZCB), for high values of roll angle (?).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2017
    Date of Patent: June 18, 2019
    Assignee: PARROT
    Inventor: Pierre Eline
  • Patent number: 10228245
    Abstract: A drone including a barometric sensor adapted to deliver a drone altitude signal; a sensor for measuring the attitude of said drone, adapted to estimate at least one angle of attitude of the drone, and altitude determination means adapted to deliver a drone altitude value, expressed in an absolute terrestrial reference system. The drone includes a relative wind speed sensor adapted to measure the relative wind speed and the altitude determination means includes a device for memorizing predetermined altitude compensation data, an altitude estimator receiving as an input the signals delivered by the attitude measurement sensor and by the relative wind speed sensor and by the barometric sensor and combining these signals with the altitude compensation data memorized in the memorized device to output the estimated drone altitude value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2017
    Date of Patent: March 12, 2019
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventors: Mathieu Babel, Nicolas Texier, Nicolas Martin
  • Patent number: 10222792
    Abstract: A device (15) for piloting a drone (10) comprising a touch screen (18) displaying a touch-sensitive area, means for detecting signals emitted by the touch-sensitive area, and means for transforming said detected signals into piloting commands and transmitting said commands to the drone. The device comprises control means, controlled by the touch-sensitive area forming activation/deactivation button, to make the drone piloting mode alternately switch between a mode of activation of the system for holding the last detected commands, mode in which said piloting commands transmitted to the drone result from the transformation of the last detected signals before the switching to the activation mode, and a mode of deactivation of the system for holding the last detected commands, mode in which said piloting commands transmitted to the drone result from the transformation of the current detected signals. The invention also relates to an associated method for controlling a drone.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 14, 2016
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2019
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventor: Martin Line
  • Patent number: 10198737
    Abstract: A system for collecting and analyzing metadata from peer-to-peer (P2P) media networks. The present invention gathers metadata about P2P media from the P2P network directly as well as relevant 3rd party social networks where that media is discussed. Users access the system via any Internet enabled device. The users' media streaming behavior is collected so that it can determine what they like. That data is indexed for future analysis. The system also monitors social network dialog keyed to the media (e.g. titles, actors, singers). The system then can identify related media on P2P networks and source it so that it is immediately available. The social data collection agents then extract data about the media that users of social networks are providing for the computing of demand for the media and/or performers.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 18, 2015
    Date of Patent: February 5, 2019
    Assignee: Parrot Analytics, Ltd.
    Inventors: Christopher Riddell, Jason Hunter, Wared Seger
  • Patent number: 10191080
    Abstract: The inertial unit, IMU, of the drone is mounted on a main circuit board. The IMU (26) includes an internal temperature sensor delivering a chip temperature signal (?°chip). A heating component (36) is mounted on the circuit board near the IMU, and it is provided a thermal guide, incorporated to the circuit board, extending between the heating component and the IMU so as to allow a transfer to the IMU of the heat produced by the heating component. This thermal guide may in particular be a metal planar layer incorporated to the board, in particular a ground plane. A thermal regulation circuit (44-62) receives as an input the chip temperature signal (?chip) and a set-point temperature signal (?°ref), and delivers a piloting signal (TH_PWM) of the heating component, so as to control the heat supply to the IMU. It is in particular possible to use this fast increase in temperature to perform a complete calibration of the IMU in a few minutes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 7, 2016
    Date of Patent: January 29, 2019
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventors: Quentin Quadrat, Cedric Chaperon, Henri Seydoux
  • Patent number: 10171746
    Abstract: The drone comprises a camera (14), an inertial unit (46) measuring the drone angles, and an extractor module (52) delivering image data of a mobile capture area of reduced size dynamically displaced in a direction opposite to that of the variations of angle measured by the inertial unit. The module analyses the image data elements of the useful area to assign to each one a weighting coefficient representative of a probability of belonging to the sky, and defines dynamically a boundary of segmentation (F) of the useful area between sky and ground as a function of these weighting coefficients. Two distinct groups of regions of interest ROIs are defined, for the sky area and for the ground area, respectively, and the dynamic exposure control means are controlled as a function of the image data of the ROIs of one of these groups, in particular by excluding the ROIs of the sky area.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 2, 2016
    Date of Patent: January 1, 2019
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventors: Benoit Pochon, Axel Balley, Henri Seydoux
  • Patent number: 10164342
    Abstract: A compact antenna for centimetric frequency bands includes an active planar element forming a radiator, coupled to an input of a receiver circuit and/or to the output of an emitter circuit, and a passive planar element forming a reflector. The passive planar element is formed by a periodic structure of the metamaterial type comprising a network of resonating cells, in particular cells of the complementary concentric slit-ring type Complementary Split-Ring Resonator (CSRR). A clip-shaped support made of a dielectric material supports the active planar element and the passive planar element.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 2017
    Date of Patent: December 25, 2018
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventor: Arnaud Arias
  • Patent number: 10165185
    Abstract: The drone comprises a camera (14) having a rolling shutter digital sensor which sends video data (l) line by line. An inertial unit (26) sends a gyrometric signal representative of the variations in attitude (?, ?, ?) of the camera at a given instant. An image processing module (30) comprising an anti-wobble module receives the video data (l) and the gyrometric signal as inputs, and outputs video data processed and corrected for artifacts introduced by the vibrations of the motors of the drone. A complementary filtering module (36) applies a predetermined compensating transfer function to the gyrometric signal at the input of the anti-wobble module, which transfer function is an inverse transfer function of the frequency response of the gyrometric sensor of the inertial unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 24, 2016
    Date of Patent: December 25, 2018
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventor: Pierre Eline
  • Patent number: 10122949
    Abstract: This camera unit (14) comprises a high-resolution rolling shutter camera (16) and one or several low-resolution global shutter cameras (18), for example monochromic spectral cameras. All the cameras are oriented in the same direction and are able to be triggered together to collect simultaneously a high-resolution image (I0) and at least one low-resolution image (I1-I4) of a same scene viewed by the drone. Image processing means (22) determine the distortions of the wobble type present in the high-resolution image and absent from the low-resolution images, and combine the high-resolution image (I0) and the low-resolution images (I1-I4) to deliver as an output a high-resolution image (I?0) corrected for these distortions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 21, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2018
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventor: Eng Hong Sron
  • Patent number: 9983579
    Abstract: The invention relates to a rotary-wing drone (10) comprising a drone body comprising an electronic board controlling the piloting of the drone, a wireless communication module and a plurality of connection arms, the wireless communication module being connected to a communication antenna (46), a plurality of propulsion units (36) mounted at the end of respective connection arms (34), and at least one drone body support (38) adapted to maintain the drone body remote from the ground. The drone body support (38) comprises an antenna housing (44) for holding the communication antenna.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 19, 2016
    Date of Patent: May 29, 2018
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventors: Christine Caubel, Guillame Savoye, Flavien Morra, Arsene Ferrand
  • Patent number: 9961658
    Abstract: A primary user terminal is interfaced with the drone so as to constitute a local network of the infrastructure type, where the drone is configured as an access point (AP) and the primary user terminal is configured as a mobile station. The primary user terminal comprises an adaptive software program able i) to generate piloting and control instructions to be transmitted to the drone, and ii) to establish a connection to the local network and to register the primary user terminal into a registration table of the drone. The network further comprises at least one secondary user terminal with an applicative software program adapted to establish a connection to the local network and to register the secondary user terminal into the registration table of the drone with a hierarchized management of the rights with respect to the primary terminal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 23, 2017
    Date of Patent: May 1, 2018
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventor: Nicolas Texier
  • Publication number: 20180108140
    Abstract: This method for detecting a target, using an electronic detection system includes acquiring an image of a scene including the target, the acquired image including a representation of the target, determining at least one segment relative to the target from at least one reference segment relative to a reference representation of the target, and estimating, from the determined segment(s), an area surrounding the representation of the target in the acquired image. At least one of the determined segments is distinct from a contour of the representation of the target and includes at least one point included inside said representation.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 10, 2017
    Publication date: April 19, 2018
    Applicant: PARROT DRONES
    Inventor: Louis-Joseph FOURNIER
  • Patent number: 9939630
    Abstract: An electrowetting optical device having a non-aqueous conductive liquid and a non-conductive liquid, the liquids being non-miscible, and a dielectric enclosure on which both liquids are in contact and form a triple interface. The non-aqueous conductive liquid includes a non-ionic polar organic solvent, and at least 2 weight % of a first compound, where the first compound is non-aqueous and is either ionic or non-ionic. If the first compound is non-ionic, the first compound is more polar than the solvent, the polarity of the non-ionic first compound being measured by Hansen parameters, a sum of the Hansen parameter for polarity (?p) and of the Hansen parameter for hydrogen bonding (?h) being higher than the sum of the corresponding Hansen parameters of the non-ionic polar organic solvent, and the non-aqueous conductive liquid having an ionic second compound.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 2015
    Date of Patent: April 10, 2018
    Assignee: PARROT DRONES
    Inventors: Benjamin Burger, Stéphanie Chevalliot, Géraldine Malet
  • Patent number: 9886033
    Abstract: The system comprises a drone and a ground station. The ground station includes a console provided with a directional antenna adapted to be directed towards the drone maintain the quality of the wireless link with the latter, and virtual reality glasses rendering images taken by a camera of the drone. The system comprises means for determining the position of the drone with respect to a heading of the console, and means for including in the images (I) rendered in the virtual reality glasses a visual indication (C, Ce, G, Id) of misalignment of the drone with respect to the console heading. Although he is isolated from the external real environment, the pilot is able, based on this visual indication, to reorient the console, typically by turning on himself, so that the directional antenna thereof suitably points towards the drone.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 19, 2016
    Date of Patent: February 6, 2018
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventors: Henri Seydoux, Nicolas Brulez, Arsene Ferrand
  • Patent number: D819749
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 16, 2015
    Date of Patent: June 5, 2018
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventors: Christine Caubel, Guillaume Savoye, Flavien Morra, Karim Fargeau
  • Patent number: D1015444
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 25, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2024
    Assignee: Parrot Drones
    Inventors: Marie Laforêt, Thomas Barse