Did You Know...
...that power steering was invented by independent inventor Francis W. Davis? As chief engineer in the 1920s of the truck division of the Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company, he saw how hard it was to steer heavy vehicles. So that he would be able to keep the profits from his future invention, Davis left his job, rented a small engineering shop in Waltham, Mass., and developed a hydraulic power steering system that led to power steering.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 6477462 | Transfer location navigation method and arrangement A drive of a primary transportation means is navigated by a navigation device along a calculated route from a starting point to a destination by the device issuing appropriate travel advice, in that a transfer location from the primary transportation mean... | 11/05/2002 |
| 6477515 | Efficient computation of least cost paths with hard constraints A system is disclosed for computing least cost paths under hard constraints such as turn angle constraints. In an explicit embodiment, a transformation is performed on a graph representation of an optimization problem to generate a transformed graph incor... | 11/05/2002 |
| 6327536 | Vehicle environment monitoring system A vehicle environment monitoring system for an automotive vehicle is capable of accurately detecting the movement of an object existing in an environment of the vehicle, and determining the possibility of collision between the object and the vehicle, ther... | 12/04/2001 |
| 6324476 | Method and apparatus for identifying or controlling travel to a rendezvous Paths are planned for one or more actors, through at least two dimensions of time or space, to identify rendezvous locations meeting a global criterion. At least two scenarios are defined, including at least one for each actor, and a configuration space i... | 11/27/2001 |
| 6269307 | Travel safety system for vehicle A lateral deviation δd which is a lateral distance between an intrinsic appropriate course R for a vehicle Ai and a contact position P at which the vehicle Ai will come into contact with an on-coming vehicle Ao, is calculated based on a relative angle θ... | 07/31/2001 |
| 6269298 | Apparatus and method for performing automatic control over velocity of automotive vehicle In automatic vehicular velocity control apparatus and method for an automotive vehicle, a controller is responsive to the detection of a new preceding vehicle by an inter-vehicle distance detector and programmed to derive a target motion of the vehicle un... | 07/31/2001 |
| 6259974 | Automated ballistic constant determination A method for the automated generation of ballistic constants for use in a trajectory control system. The potential trajectory of a pursuing vehicle is divided into a plurality of multiple sequential phases wherein each phase is characterized by a pluralit... | 07/10/2001 |
| 6226573 | Course generator of moving body An apparatus for improving the reliability of a course generator of a moving body and the efficiency of the moving body. When the tangent (53) of a scheduled course (50) at its branch point (PS) is in parallel with a line segment (54) coincident with the ... | 05/01/2001 |
| 6201482 | Method of detecting a collision risk and preventing air collisions In a method of detecting a collision risk and preventing air collisions, it is proposed that probabilities should be calculated for the likely presence of one's own aircraft in predetermined sectors at a number of selected times (probabilities of presence... | 03/13/2001 |
| 6169495 | Vehicle traffic control system A vehicle traffic control system that does not cause course conflicts at intersections. A present position, speed, and destination of each vehicle are collected, vectors are generated to indicate possible courses for each vehicle on the basis of the colle... | 01/02/2001 |
| 6161063 | Method for controlling an aerodyne for the vertical avoidance of a zone A method of automatically controlling an aircraft to avoid a vertical zone includes several steps. The aircraft first acquires limits of the zone to be avoided. The zone is modeled by a cylindrical volume which is limited by a horizontal contour with uppe... | 12/12/2000 |
| 6134502 | Energy-based approach for obstacle avoidance A method for determining an alternate path by a mobile machine to avoid at least one obstacle. The method includes the steps of assigning an initial value of charge to the mobile machine, assigning a value of charge to a desired destination, determining t... | 10/17/2000 |
| 6092007 | Aircraft course correction for wind and fuzzy logic course intercept profile based upon accuracy and efficiency An aircraft autopilot system provides a wind correction angle which is added to the desired course to provide commanded heading, the wind correction angle being generated as a proportional and integral function of ground track error. When the aircraft is ... | 07/18/2000 |
| 6085147 | System for determination of optimal travel path in a multidimensional space The present automated vehicle travel path determination system which computes a travel path for a vehicle from an origination point to a destination point based on the operating characteristics of the vehicle as well as phenomena extant in the multidimens... | 07/04/2000 |
| 6006144 | Driving force control apparatus for moving vehicle by desired distance A driving force control apparatus for moving a vehicle by a desired distance includes an input section for input a desired move distance, a throttle controller section for setting a throttle actuator of the vehicle at an opening degree, an actual moved di... | 12/21/1999 |
| 6006145 | Method and apparatus for directing a pursuing vehicle to a target with intelligent evasion capabilities A method and apparatus for directing a pursuing vehicle, such as a torpedo, on an intercept trajectory from a launching vehicle to a target vehicle th evasion capabilities. Models of the pursuing vehicle and evading target provide proposed trajectories b... | 12/21/1999 |
| 5838262 | Aircraft virtual image display system and method for providing a real-time perspective threat coverage display A virtual image display system for aircraft is operative to identify threat systems that are proximal the flight path of an aircraft when the aircraft is within the threat range of such threat systems. The virtual image display system is further operative... | 11/17/1998 |
| 5822713 | Guided fire control system The present invention is a fire control system. The fire control system comprises a manually aimed gun having a sighting device and a device for acquiring a target. The acquiring device is disposed at a location remote from the gun. The fire control syste... | 10/13/1998 |
| 5793889 | Plume or combustion detection by time sequence differentiation A method and system of image modulation detection of an aircraft exhaust plume by time sequence differentiation is provided. The method comprises the steps of forming two sequential images of the field of view in which an exhaust plume to be detected is l... | 08/11/1998 |
| 5596332 | Aircraft location and identification system An aircraft location and identification system, including a first position determining portion located aboard a transmitting aircraft for determining a first set of present positional and tracking information is described relative to said transmitting air... | 01/21/1997 |
| 5347469 | Covert ranging method and system A method and system for covertly determining and predicting air-to-air target data relative to a predetermined position passively senses the target (84) to produce a passive target data set. Next, the method and system transform (14) the passive target da... | 09/13/1994 |
| 5128873 | Aircraft rendezvous using low data rate two-way TACAN bearing information Aircraft rendezvous is facilitated by operating airborne remote aircraft TACAN stations in the inverse bearing mode and using low data rate range interrogation and range reply signals for determining bearing. An aircraft determines its bearing to another ... | 07/07/1992 |
| 5064141 | Combined sensor guidance system A guidance system for a homing missile having an observer filter which utilizes signals representative of range, range rate, acceleration normal to the line-of-sight of the missile, acceleration along the line-of-sight of the missile, and line-of-sight ra... | 11/12/1991 |
| 5015187 | Helicopter remote control system A remote controlled helicoper having a video radio frequency link to a fixed control location has a video camera with a field of view including the terrain forward of the helicopter, an airspeed display, a relative wind direction indicator, and a pitch in... | 05/14/1991 |
| 4885536 | Magnetic process for determining a trajectory for finding a magnetic object and apparatus for performing the process Magnetic process for determining the trajectory of a moving vehicle for finding a fixed or moving magnetic object and apparatus for performing the process. The apparatus comprises magnetometers for measuring at least p independent components of the gradie... | 12/05/1989 |
| 4803631 | Doppler-adaptive filter for non-zero mean dropout noise An iterative process for computing the trajectory of one object containing a transmitter relative to another object containing a plurality of receivers is disclosed. The process contains a subprocess which estimates the trajectory band from the Doppler sh... | 02/07/1989 |
| 4783744 | Self-adaptive IRU correction loop design interfacing with the target state estimator for multi-mode terminal handoff A method and apparatus for identifying inertial reference unit (IRU) errors in a guided missile employing a multi-mode guidance system and constructing correction terms to recover the missile true position. Discrepancy parameters are introduced to indicat... | 11/08/1988 |
| 4748569 | Helicopter navigation and location system The disclosure relates to a helicopter (5) having a flight path computer to provide signals for pilot or automatic flying in accordance with a predetermined flight path, a forward looking infra-red camera (6) for scanning ahead and to either side of the f... | 05/31/1988 |
| 4494202 | Fourth order predictive, augmented proportional navigation system terminal guidance design with missile/target decoupling A method for augmenting a noise-adaptive predictive proportional navigation terminal guidance scheme. In a fourth order configuration with noise adaptive varying gain parameters calculated as a function of time-to-go, this system implements an optimal con... | 01/15/1985 |
| 4456862 | Augmented proportional navigation in second order predictive scheme A method for augmenting a noise-adaptive predictive proportional navigation terminal guidance scheme. In a second order configuration with noise adaptive varying gain parameters calculated as a function of time-to-go, this system implements an optimal con... | 06/26/1984 |
| 4424943 | Tracking system An improved line-of-sight commanded missile guidance system is provided which provides the operator of a missile system with the capability of hitting targets which would otherwise be obscured by darkness, smoke, aerosols or poor atmospheric visibility. T... | 01/10/1984 |
| 4323025 | Torpedo steering control system 1. In a homing torpedo, in combination: means for providing a target search hase of torpedo operation wherein said torpedo is controlled to change depth between predetermined search floor and search ceiling depths and simultaneously controlled to circle in... | 04/06/1982 |
| 4121246 | Ground impact point prediction system concept for airdrops The present invention utilizes a conventional aircraft landing and approach indicator in conjunction with a pilot controllable television camera and supporting aircraft computer for tracking an airdrop target and displaying the locus of payload ground imp... | 10/17/1978 |
| 4084241 | System for processing movement information of vehicle A system for generating the data concerning the position of a moving vehicle comprising paired independently rotatable wheels provided at the opposite sides of the moving direction of the vehicle, the system comprising first and second pulse generators in... | 04/11/1978 |
| 3964695 | Time to intercept measuring apparatus An apparatus mounted in an intercept or seeker missile for computing during the flight of the intercept missile toward a target, such as another or target missile, a continuous estimate of the "time to go" to the point of closest approach of the intercept... | 06/22/1976 |
