JP2021165077A - Flying body - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a technique advantageous for weight reduction and cost reduction of an air vehicle including an imaging unit.
A flying object according to the present invention includes a body portion, a propeller portion for levitating the body portion, an imaging unit built in the body portion, and a lens for guiding incident light to the imaging unit. It is provided with a lens portion which is a portion and is detachably formed on the body portion.
[Selection diagram] Fig. 1

Description

The present invention mainly relates to an air vehicle.

Patent Document 1 describes the structure of an air vehicle including an imaging unit. Such an air vehicle can also be called a drone or the like. According to Patent Document 1, the image pickup unit includes a lens unit, and realizes a zoom function by driving and controlling the lens unit.

Japanese Patent No. 6641574

It may be required to reduce the weight and cost of such an air vehicle.

An exemplary object of the present invention is to provide a technique advantageous for reducing the weight and cost of an air vehicle including an imaging unit.

One aspect of the present invention relates to a flying object, which comprises a body portion, a propeller portion for levitating the body portion, an imaging unit built in the body portion, and light incident on the imaging unit. The body portion is provided with a lens portion for guiding the light beam and a lens portion that is detachably formed on the body portion.

According to the present invention, it is possible to reduce the weight and cost of the flying object.

It is a front perspective view of the flying object which concerns on embodiment. It is a block diagram which shows an example of the system configuration of an air vehicle. It is a bottom perspective view of an air vehicle. It is a right side view which shows one aspect of a flying body. It is a right side view which shows the other aspect of an air vehicle.

Hereinafter, embodiments will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. The following embodiments do not limit the invention according to the claims, and not all combinations of features described in the embodiments are essential to the invention. Two or more of the plurality of features described in the embodiments may be arbitrarily combined. In addition, the same or similar configuration will be given the same reference number, and duplicated explanations will be omitted.

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of the flying object 1 according to the embodiment. FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing an example of the system configuration of the flying object 1.

The flying object 1 includes a body unit 10, a propeller unit 11, an imaging unit 12, a lens unit 13, a mounting unit 14, a control unit 15, and a battery unit 16. Elements 11 to 16 are attached to the body portion 10, respectively, and the details will be described later, but the lens portion 13 is detachable from the body portion 10 via the attachment portion 14.

The propeller portion 11 is configured so that the body portion 10 can be levitated, and a plurality of propeller portions 11 are provided around the body portion 10 (here, a total of four propeller portions 11 are provided on the front left side, the front right side, the rear left side, and the rear right side). Each propeller portion 11 includes a power source 111, a plurality of blades 112, a holding portion 113, a leg portion 114, and a protective frame 115.

The power source 111 is configured to be capable of generating power (rotation). As the power source 111, a known electric motor such as a DC motor can be typically used. The plurality of (three blades in this case) blades 112 are provided in a horizontal posture and rotate based on the power of the power source 111 to generate lift for raising the body portion 10. The holding unit 113 is a housing that holds the power source 111. The legs 114 extend downward from the holding portions 113 to support the landing flying object 1. The protective frame 115 is provided around the plurality of blades 112 to protect them.

By individually driving the plurality of propeller units 11 configured in this way, various flight modes (hovering, yawing, etc.) of the flying object 1 can be realized.

The imaging unit 12 is built in the body unit 10. A known solid-state image pickup device such as a CCD / CMOS image sensor can be used for the image pickup unit 12. In the present embodiment, the imaging unit 12 is composed of a semiconductor package and does not have a zoom function.

The lens unit 13 is detachably configured with respect to the body unit 10 by an attachment unit 14 described later, and can guide incident light to the image pickup unit 12 in a state of being attached to the body unit 10. A plurality of types (for example, a wide-angle lens, a telephoto lens, etc.) may be prepared for the lens unit 13, and the user can arbitrarily select one of them and attach it to the body unit 10.

The mounting portion 14 is configured so that the lens portion 13 can be mounted on the body portion 10. Further, the mounting portion 14 is partially built in the body portion 10, the imaging unit 12 is fixed, and the mounting portion 14 is rotatably provided with respect to the body portion 10. That is, when the mounting portion 14 rotates with respect to the body portion 10 while the lens portion 13 is mounted, the lens portion 13 also rotates with respect to the body portion 10, and the imaging unit 12 also rotates with respect to the body portion 10. It will rotate with respect to the portion 10. Therefore, since the relative position of the lens unit 13 with respect to the image pickup unit 12 does not change, the lens unit 13 can appropriately guide the incident light to the image pickup unit 12 regardless of its displacement.

As described above, the user can select one of the plurality of types of lens portions 13 and attach it to the body portion 10. Therefore, it is preferable that the mounting mode conforms to a predetermined standard. For example, even if the lens portion 13 is fixed to the mounting portion 14 by fastening with a predetermined screw such as a metric fine screw having an outer diameter of 17 [mm (millimeter)] and a pitch (number of threads) of 0.75 [mm]. good.

The control unit 15 is a system controller that controls the drive of the propeller unit 11 and the imaging unit 12, and the control unit 15 is an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) in this embodiment, but as another embodiment, a CPU and It may be a processor composed of memory. That is, the function of the control unit 15 can be realized by either hardware or software.

Although not shown here, the control unit 15 is capable of wireless communication with a user's terminal (corresponding controller, smartphone, etc.), and the control unit 15 captures the propeller unit 11 and an image based on a signal from the terminal. The drive control of the unit 12 can be executed.

Further, the body unit 10 can insert and remove a storage medium (for example, an SD memory card) (not shown), and the control unit 15 captures the imaging results of the imaging unit 12 such as moving image data and still image data. The imaging unit 12 can be controlled so as to be stored in the storage medium.

The battery unit 16 is removably provided on the opposite side of the lens unit 13 with respect to the body unit 10, and can supply electric power corresponding to the propeller unit 11, the imaging unit 12, and the control unit 15 via the power supply unit 161. do. A known secondary battery such as a lithium ion battery may be used for the battery unit 16, and a known power supply IC may be used for the power supply unit 161.

FIG. 3 is a bottom perspective view of the flying object 1. The body portion 10 is provided with an opening OP10, the holding portion 113 is provided with an opening OP113, and the protective frame 115 is provided with a U-shaped beam portion B115 extending from the opening OP10 to the opening OP113. Be done. The signal line for driving and controlling the power source 111 can be arranged from the opening OP10 through the U-shaped beam portion B115 to the opening OP113. This makes it difficult for the signal line to be visually recognized from the outside, which is advantageous for improving the aesthetic appearance of the flying object 1.

FIG. 4A is a right side view of the flying object 1 when the lens unit 13 is facing forward. FIG. 4B is a right side view of the flying object 1 when the lens portion 13 is facing downward. As described above, the mounting portion 14 for mounting the lens portion 13 to the body portion 10 is rotatably provided with respect to the body portion 10. Therefore, the directional range of the lens unit 13 can be changed.

As can be seen from FIG. 4A, when the lens portion 13 faces forward, the tip portion of the lens portion 13 is located behind the protective frame 115 (on the body portion 10 side). As can be seen from FIG. 4B, when the lens portion 13 faces downward, the tip portion of the lens portion 13 is located behind the leg portion 114 (on the body portion 10 side). That is, in the side view, the lens portion 13 is attached so that the tip portion thereof is located closer to the body portion 10 than both the protective frame 115 and the leg portion 114, regardless of the direction range thereof. As a result, even when the flying object 1 comes into contact with an obstacle, the impact on the lens portion 13 at that time is alleviated by the protective frame 115 and / or the leg portion 114, and damage to the lens portion 13 is appropriately prevented. sell.

As described above, according to the present embodiment, by using the detachable / interchangeable lens unit 13 without providing the zoom function in the imaging unit 12, the weight reduction and cost reduction of the flying object 1 can be made relatively simple. It will be feasible. Here, the lens portion 13 is attached to the body portion 10 by the attachment portion 14, and since the attachment portion 14 is rotatable with respect to the body portion 10, the lens portion 13 is displaced with respect to the body portion 10. It is possible. Therefore, the user can arbitrarily change the directional range of the lens unit 13. The change of the directional range can be realized manually before the user levitates the flying object 1, and any of the regions from the front to the lower side of the aviation body 1 can be set as the directional range. Further, by making the mounting mode of the lens portion 13 conform to a predetermined standard, the user can relatively easily realize that a plurality of types of lens portions 13 are selectively attached to the body portion 10.

The invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, and various modifications and changes can be made within the scope of the gist of the invention.

1: Air vehicle, 10: Body part, 11: Propeller part, 12: Imaging part, 13: Lens part.

Claims (7)

Body part and
A propeller part for raising the body part and
An imaging unit built into the body unit and
A flying object including a lens unit for guiding incident light to the imaging unit and a lens unit detachably configured on the body unit. Further provided with a mounting portion for mounting the lens portion,
The flying object according to claim 1, wherein the mounting portion fixes the imaging unit and is rotatably provided with respect to the body portion. The flying object according to claim 1 or 2, wherein a plurality of the propeller portions are provided around the body portion. The propeller part
Power source and
With multiple blades
A holding unit that holds the power source and
With the legs extending below the holding part,
A protective frame provided around the plurality of blades and
The flying object according to any one of claims 1 to 3, which includes the above. The flying object according to claim 4, wherein the lens portion can be attached so that the tip portion thereof is located closer to the body portion than both the protective frame and the leg portion in a side view. The flying object according to any one of claims 1 to 5, further comprising a battery unit that can be inserted into and removed from the body portion on the side opposite to the lens portion with respect to the body portion. The body part that makes the lens part removable and
A propeller part for raising the body part and
A flying object including an imaging unit built in the body unit and capable of taking an image based on incident light guided by the lens unit.

Images