US Patent 9262929 Ground-sensitive trajectory generation for UAVs

Embodiments described herein may help to automatically create flight plans that incorporate information regarding a number of different societal considerations. An illustrative computer-implemented method may involve receiving societal-consideration data for a plurality of geographic areas over which unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deployable. For a given geographic area from the plurality of geographic areas, the societal-consideration data may include one or more land-use indications for the geographic area that are indicative of a type of land use in the geographic area. The method may also involve, for each of one or more of the plurality of geographic areas: applying a cost function to the one or more land-use indications for the geographic area to determine a societal-consideration cost of UAV flight over the geographic area; and sending an indication of the determined societal-consideration cost to a computer-based flight planner.