Drone delivery firm Flirtey gains crucial safety patent

Less than a month after releasing a new video detailing a Flirtey drone delivery operation, the innovative unmanned aircraft systems company has announced the receipt of a crucial new patent.

Flirtey earned a patent that involves the delivery drones safety system and alerts the operating software when a flight may have been altered or compromised. Once requirements are met for the alert, a safety mechanism (a parachute) can be deployed to limit damage or risk to bystanders.

Matthew Sweeney, CEO of Flirtey, was the lead author of the patent. The company provided the following abstract.

Disclosed is a technique for landing a drone using a parachute. The technique includes a parachute deployment system (PDS) that can deploy a parachute installed in a drone and land the drone safely. The parachute may be deployed automatically, e.g., in response to a variety of failures such as a free fall, or manually from a base unit operated by a remote user. For example, the PDS can determine the failure of the drone based on data obtained from an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a magnetometer and a barometer of the drone and automatically deploy the parachute if any failure is determined. In another example, the remote user can “kill” the drone, that is, cut off the power supply to the drone and deploy the parachute by activating an onboard “kill” switch from the base unit.

Flirtey holds over 25 patents, granted and pending, in the United States and worldwide.

In its video released recently, the company offered a nearly six minute video of how Flirtey’s inner operations process works. Find the full video here.