PicPocket-Labs announced that it has been awarded US Patent No. 10,640,208 for “Drone Based Systems and Methodologies for Capturing Images.”
The patent pertains to an “on-demand” service which allows a user to send or request an unmanned autonomous vehicle (UAV) to a location or a target of interest (stationary or moving) for, among other purposes, media/data capture. Combined with PicPocket’s seminal, geofencing patents (and related/pending applications), the ability to assume control over a UAV, for and during a specified period of time, while the UAV is within a specific geographic area, is fundamental to advance a beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) service and applications thereof.
National patent protection is underway in Canada, China and Europe – the latter via a European regional application. The company is actively seeking strategic, customer-partners among drone manufacturers, telecommunications players and UTM and UAM service providers operating in these same regions.
“The use of drones in insurance, first-responder networks, agriculture, infrastructure inspection, connected stadiums, youth sports and live-events is big business – estimated to exceed over $100B by this time next year. As companies big and small embrace digital technologies to help streamline their operations and deliver new services, there’s no telling to what extent drones will play a role in almost every industry” states Wolfram Gauglitz, Founder and CEO of PicPocket-Labs, Inc.. “PicPocket views the combination of drones and geofencing as a growth opportunity with near unlimited potential.”
“According to a study conducted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Danish Technological Institute, in 2008 the total number of published drone patents, worldwide, numbered less than three hundred. When we filed our application in 2014, there were four-thousand five-hundred. Come years’ end (2020), it is projected that over seventy-five thousand UAV-related patents will have been applied for”, explains Gauglitz. “With all that interest in drones, it is reasonable to expect their performance (i.e. flight range, wireless data-rates, sensor/camera performance) to improve dramatically. As those technology gains are realized, industry leaders and markets as a whole will find more applications for, and utility in, PicPocket’s early geofencing and drone IP.”