Abstract: The present invention describes a system for changing the properties of the lenses to create changes in focus, magnification, and optical stabilization without changing the shape of the lens or moving the lenses. It uses an acoustic wave that when propagated through the lenses, creates a standing wave that changes the diffractive capabilities of the lens. It involves the properties of many materials to change the diffractive properties when subjected to acoustic waves. The acoustic waves are generally accomplished with a piezo electric transducer or modulator. The frequencies used are in the RF range, depending on the substrate. Substrates used include glass and silicon, as well as more esoteric transparent materials. The system described in the present invention involves the development of a lensing mechanism that comprises one or more acoustio-optic modulator(s), a transparent or semi-transparent substrate where the modulation is applied, and a non-parallel standing wave being propagated in the substrate.

Abstract: This invention involves the effect of multiple rules of the road at different elevation profiles on the speed constraints and therefore the overall fuel efficiency. A vehicle designed to optimize fuel consumption that is comprised of the rules of the road that determine maximum speed, minimum speed, stop signs, streetlights, and/or changes in other rules that determine the allowable speeds of the road, a localization mechanism, and an optimization engine to optimize the fuel economy by selecting a speed profile within that maintains the vehicle within the assigned range of speeds and minimizes fuel consumption. A wide variety of methods that typically are used to optimize the fuel efficiency of human drivers operating standard vehicles can also be applied towards autonomous vehicles driving at different speed constraints and with different changes in the elevation.

Abstract: Atomic clocks (at both the receiver and emitter) are used to obfuscate the location of the receiver by providing a different mechanism to synchronize (other than the direct reception). Using this approach, there is no need for the emitter to emit directly to the receiver; only the reflection is necessary, and therefore, the location of the receiver (or receivers) is better obfuscated. Phased antenna arrays are used in RADAR for a variety of applications, including steering of beams and increasing the “aperture” of the antenna for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The relative position of the emitters is known by means of using a Navigation unit. The beam-steering phase shifts are dynamically computed using the position of the emitters, and the atomic clock is used to synchronize the phase shifts.

Abstract: This invention relates to the development of an autonomous fire vehicle that is capable of performing one or more of the following functions: detecting water supplies such as a fire hydrant or other sources of water suitable for firefighting, detecting the location of a fire, detecting the location of other fire/police/first responder vehicles, detection of smoke, and analysis of smoke/fire content to determine type of fuel being burned. The autonomous fire vehicle contains a drive by wire kit, a database storing the collection routes, a database storing the collection routes, a database of rules of the road or other legal allowable behavior, sensors for detecting the pedestrians, cars, and other road obstacles, and a control system that controls the vehicle to follow routes while performing the above functions.

Abstract: Backing up and aligning tractor trailers to a loading dock is one of the most complicated tasks performed by a truck driver. The present invention provides aids, and/or autonomy, to the driver in both conditions: the warehouse, and the less structured origin/destination. The invention is designed to aid the driver with facilities to simplify the parking and loading dock alignment process. The invention controls the drive-by-wire system in the truck, controlling the steering, gearbox, acceleration, and break, to automatically back up the truck into the desired location. This is possible if the truck is equipped with a drive-by-wire kit. The invention controls one or more control signals to the drive-by-wire system while the driver controls the others.

Abstract: Mines and construction sites are pnme applications for automation. The invention is composed of a protocol that allows multiple machines to be coordinated from a single application. The invention provides what in classical control is called a coordination layer between the machines (4D-RCS). This coordination layer is currently provided by humans as machines only interact with each other in the physical world, but there is no infrastructure to have them coordinated from an autonomous control standpoint.

Abstract: The present invention pertains to the development of a ground autonomous ambulance that is designed to follow routes that is comprised of an autonomous vehicle that includes a drive by wire kit, a database storing the collection routes, a database of rules of the road and/or other legal allowable behavior, sensors for detecting the pedestrians, cars, and other road obstacles, and a control system that controls the vehicle to follow routes and which is capable of carrying and securing a stretcher or wheelchair. The autonomous ambulance also has a robotic stretcher which is used for transporting patients from their residences or other emergency locations to the ambulance.

Abstract: This invention pertains to the development of an autonomous road surface marking vehicle that is capable of detecting road, pedestrians, cars, and other road obstacles and in which these autonomous vehicles provide several types of functionalities such as painting different lines, adding markers, removing markers, warning other traffic, etc. The autonomous road surface marking vehicle is designed to follow routes and mark road surfaces and comprises an autonomous vehicle that includes a drive by wire kit, a database sorting the routes, locations, and types of markings, a mechanism for detecting the road, pedestrians, cars, and other road obstacles, and a control system that control the autonomous vehicle to follow routes and operate the road surface marking device at the proper location.

Abstract: The path of a lead autonomous vehicle moving through “deformable” terrain is shared between the lead autonomous vehicle and the following autonomous vehicles with a much lower cost. The lead autonomous vehicle records distances to 3D obstacles and whether to drive through them and the following autonomous vehicles will classify different “obstacles” that were driven through by the leader and allow the planner to drive through them. In “deformable” terrain, errors in wheel odometry will be recorded by the lead autonomous vehicle and the following autonomous vehicles are informed that similar problems will be encountered. These errors are sensed by discrepancies between odometry and inertial and visual odometry. The behavior of the following autonomous vehicles may preclude them from creating accelerations that may slip as experienced by the lead autonomous vehicle.

Abstract: The invention involves the development of an autonomous street sweeper vehicle which can detect the presence of obstacles and pedestrians and is used to perform a variety of sweeping functions such as sweeping, vacuuming, blowing, scraping, and such types of functions on roads and a variety of different surfaces. This invention pertains to an autonomous street sweeper vehicle designed to follow routes comprising an autonomous vehicle that includes a drive by wire kit, a database storing the collection routes, a mechanism for detecting the curb, pedestrians, cars, and other road obstacles, a control system that controls the truck to follow routes while maintaining the truck at serviceable distances to the curb that improve the efficiency of the sweeper. The autonomous street sweeper convoy communicates with each other via radios or other methods and a lead vehicle which could be functional or non-functional accompanies several autonomous street sweeper vehicles as part of a convey.

Abstract: This invention pertains to the development of a drone that can pour a variety of chemical agents such as oxidizers, silica gelling agents, enzymes, and neutralizers onto areas contaminated with chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. These decontaminants are known to be effective at destroying both chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction simultaneously. The use of a drone to destroy the chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction is highly beneficial since it allows the exposed toxic areas to be remotely decontaminated without the presence of humans. Some of these methods of decontamination are non-toxic and environmentally friendly so it can also be used to pour or spray these agents on humans that are exposed to chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction to safely destroy these agents.

Abstract: Many railroad crossings have humped geometrical profiles that pose great risk to motor vehicles such as cars, buses, and trucks crossing the railroad tracks. There is a need to be able to safely detect these humped profiles on the railroad crossings. As a result, there is a need to develop a drone-based grade crossing inspection system to improve the efficiency of grade crossing inspections for humped conditions and other safety-related conditions such as visual sight lines, location of gates, lights, signage, culverts, rail deformations, grade crossings, drainage pipes, and other conditions. The drone that is used must be able to navigate both in the ground as well as in the air since it is necessary to be able to drive to detect the humped conditions and the visual sight lines while it is necessary to be able to fly in the air to detect the lights, signs, and gates.

Abstract: As autonomous vehicles are starting to become a reality, accurate path following is needed. Pure Pursuit and Vector Pursuit algorithms are commonly used to control the steering actuators. Unfortunately, these algorithms do not take under consideration that real world actuators have steering rates that have maximum acceleration and speed of the changes to the steering and therefore the curvature rates of the vehicle as it is following a trajectory. This is even more evident in large vehicles that require significant torque to move the steering column like trucks and heavy industrial equipment. Therefore, if these vehicles attempt to closely follow trajectories at higher speed, the vehicles will undoubtedly understeer as the steering actuators do not have enough time/power to catch up with the curvatures dictated by the path even if kinematically and dynamically, the vehicles can safely perform the turns.

Abstract: Postal, package, and grocery deliveries are performed routinely everywhere around the world. Currently, the delivery truck drives slowly, and the postman or delivery man goes from one house to another. The postman already has a box that he carries with the sorted letters for a few of the contiguous houses, stops the truck, and walks to the different houses in the bunch, and then moves the truck and goes to the next bunch of houses. In this invention, the package delivery truck will automatically follow the mailman while still staying close to the curb to minimize traffic issues. Here, the autonomous package or delivery truck could actually go in front of the mailman to look for a good spot for the next cluster, or can wait for the mailman that is close to the last house of the current cluster, pick him up, and drop off at the center of the next cluster, or at the first house of the next cluster. In addition, there are robots that replace the function of the human (mailman or grocery delivery man).

Abstract: Waste collection is performed at regular intervals around the world. The process currently is performed by a team consisting of a waste collection truck that carries the refuse that is driven around urban areas at slow speeds. This waste collection truck usually contains a large opening in the back. A team of humans controls this truck and collects the bins dumping the refuse on the back of the truck and returning the bins to the curb. Usually, the driver (human) of the truck positions the truck so as to minimize the distance that the human garbage collectors need to walk with the loaded bins, and slowly drives a route that take the truck to the collections sites. Because currently most residential neighborhoods and some commercial neighborhoods do not use bins and pick up locations that are easy to automatically lift, it is likely that the process of picking up the bins, depositing the refuse on the truck, and returning the bins to the curb will be performed by humans for some time to come.

Abstract: Battery powered quadrotors or drones have a limited operation time. To extend operation time, a powered tether can be used. This tether provides power to the drone allowing it to stay up indefinitely. Most tethered drones are captured to the base station. The tether can reel in and out as the drone moves, but the drone can't go higher or further than the maximum length of the tether. If the tether can be automatically disconnected, the drone could fly off for some remote mission, assuming the drone had an onboard power source such as rechargeable batteries. The present invention relates to a self-powered drone tether that comprises a rechargeable drone in flight which is referred to as the rechargeable drone, a drone that carries a powered tether which is referred to as the tether drone, a coupling mechanism between the rechargeable drone and the tether drone, and a base station with a powered tether and tether deployment system.

Abstract: Trucks in a mine or construction site move dirt, ore, or other matter from one location to another. The ore is usually loaded using an excavator or loader. Once at the unloading destination, the truck needs to determine where to unload the ore, dirt, or matter. Different applications require the load to be dumped in different manners. The present invention encodes this knowledge into a database of preferred behaviors and creates a set of automated maneuvers that accomplish these actions. The invention assumes that the truck has a drive-by-wire kit, and that its capable of moving under computer control.

Abstract: Different separation distances are required and needed for different applications. For example, in some areas of the road, it may be advantageous to have trucks platoon at short distances due to the drafting effect and the associated fuel savings, however, in other areas, it is beneficial to have vehicles at longer separations. For example, if we have long strings of trucks in a single convoy, they may block the rest of the traffic from exiting or turning. There is a need to allow an operator or even automatically to have the system adjust the following distances. At short distances, short range communication, and fast control loops are necessary, at longer distances, control effects are less pronounced and the sensors that are efficient at short distances become inefficient at long distances and vice-versa. The system in presented here provides a mechanism for manually or automatically modifying the following gaps.

Abstract: A broadcasting method has been developed that no longer uses the point-to-point measurements that causes the bottlenecks due to the number of measurements that need to be taken increasing non-linearly with the number of nodes. In addition, not all nodes need to emit. This results in significantly less expensive devices that can be paired with emitting nodes in the infrastructure. The energy emitted by the group is lowered and there is significantly less bandwidth that is used compared to current systems. This system is designed to synchronize remote clocks and localize a group of nodes and comprises at least 4 ranging nodes equipped with a clock, the capability to send and receive messages, the capability to time-tag messages, the capability for the nodes to compute the two sheeted hyperboloids from the emissions of other nodes, and the capability of combining multiple hyperboloids to solve the localization equations.

Abstract: A system has been developed for arranging a number of autonomous vehicles at a staging area which comprises two or more autonomous vehicles, a localization mechanism that provides the relative or absolute position of the autonomous vehicle to be arranged, a pattern for aligning the autonomous vehicles at the staging area and a planning algorithm that takes as input the current state of the autonomous vehicles and creates obstacle free trajectories that optimize the motion from the current state to a formation that matches the desired pattern. A set of operator aids have been created for automated convoy assembly in tactical assembly area. These aids can be remote and do not need to be in the same cab of the vehicle. The operator aids are used in conjunction with full automation. The operator is allowed to decide where to form the convoy and where to align.