ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,606,318, issued on April 21, was assigned to Kitty Hawk Corp. (Palo Alto, Calif.).
"Health based actuator allocation" was invented by Christopher Scott Saunders (San Jose, Calif.) and Mark Johnson Cutler (Sunnyvale, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vertical takeoff and landing vehicle which includes an allocation block that receives a set of desired forces or desired moments and a health metric associated with at least one of: (1) a motor controller or (2) a rotor that operates in a vertical takeoff and landing mode at least some of the time. A command signal is determined per a first manner that attempts to satisfy both the set ...