General Motors applies for patent for emergency vehicle drone navigation

Recently, General Motors announced a patent for a drone-based vehicle emergency response system in the United States. The system aims to improve off-road vehicle safety and traffic efficiency by integrating aerial drones.

According to the patent application, GM plans to use drones equipped with multiple sensors such as lidar to fly in front of the vehicle to survey the terrain and collect road information. At the same time, the drone system can identify the vehicle's driving path, predict potential risks, or locate trapped people.

It is worth noting that after the drone sends back the target area information, the system will further consider environmental factors such as expected tilt angle, approach and departure angles, potential obstacles, whether wading is required, etc. Subsequently, the vehicle processing system will respond and update instructions in real time through communication links and mobile devices to help search and rescue people in distress.

It is understood that the drone system can also provide a variety of routes with different difficulty levels to choose from. In addition, the system can also estimate power reserves and cruising range to determine whether the vehicle can safely reach the destination and return.

Compared with traditional navigation systems, the advantage of drones is that they can provide a "God's perspective" and observe the three-dimensional terrain in the distance in real time, which is obviously of great significance for personnel search and rescue and off-road road planning. In addition to General Motors, other car companies also have similar vehicle-mounted drone application technologies. Yangwang U8 is equipped with a vehicle-mounted integrated drone developed by BYD and DJI. It supports intelligent storage, automatic battery replacement and charging management, and can take off and land with one button. With the drone sensor chain, it can achieve high-definition, high-frame-rate and low-latency image transmission, which can effectively solve the problem of limited visual space in the car, thereby further expanding the line of sight in the car.