Patents by Inventor Christopher Helm

Christopher Helm has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 11999397
    Abstract: A system for railroad directive management is presented. The system can receive a myriad of data related to a directive, track segments, and/or vehicle events on the track and/or track segments. Vehicle- and/or event-specific data can be compared with one or more thresholds, including force thresholds, temporal thresholds, environmental thresholds, and/or event thresholds to determine whether and what kind of directive modification should be instantiated. Specialized algorithms can be implemented to trace vehicle paths along the track to determine whether directive-related segments are traversed, and specialized clustering algorithms can be utilized to cluster data unique to a particular segment on a per-segment basis. The system can be integrated with existing track infrastructure and can further generate alerts to notify coupled systems and/or personnel of directives and/or modification thereof.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 12, 2022
    Date of Patent: June 4, 2024
    Assignee: BNSF Railway Company
    Inventors: Christopher Neil Pickard, Kyle Keilty Williams, Gregory Harrison, James Helm
  • Publication number: 20230351690
    Abstract: A three-dimensional (3D) mapping system can be configured to generate a 3D map of a real-world environment using annotation of large image data sets, in which terrestrial imagery can be programmatically labeled with accurate labels using remotely sensed overhead image data. The 3D mapping system can implement photogrammetry to create a point cloud. Each pixel in the point cloud can be classified based on a consensus of each frame. The point cloud can be co-registered to a remotely sensed reference dataset to provide precise spatial coordinates for each pixel. Different patches of point clouds can be stitched together to provide a complete 3D map for a given area, such as a downtown area of a city.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 21, 2022
    Publication date: November 2, 2023
    Inventors: Sean Gorman, Christopher Helm, Pramukta Kumar