Patent ID: 11947363
Assignee: SUBARU CORPORATION
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 0:
1. An aircraft comprising:
a fuselage;
a main wing attached to the fuselage and configured to generate lift that acts on the aircraft;
electric field sensors configured to detect electric field intensities at a plurality of positions of the aircraft; and
a flight controller including:
an electric field direction estimator configured to, based on information on relationships between directions of electric fields around the aircraft and electric field intensity distributions on the aircraft, estimate a direction of an electric field around the aircraft from the detected electric field intensities at the plurality of positions of the aircraft;
an attitude calculator configured to calculate a target airframe attitude to control an airframe attitude of the aircraft so that the electric field intensity distribution on the aircraft becomes uniform relative to the direction of the electric field estimated by the electric field direction estimator, in which the electric field intensity distribution comprises one or more non-zero values; and
an attitude controller configured to control the airframe attitude of the aircraft to cause the airframe attitude to be the target airframe attitude calculated by the attitude calculator, and select a flight route that aligns with the target airframe attitude to be calculated by the attitude calculator to minimize a risk of lightning strikes on the aircraft.