CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application claims the benefit of priority of Japanese Patent Application Number 2018-129628 filed on Jul. 9, 2018, the entire content of which is hereby incorporated by reference.

BACKGROUND

1. Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to control devices, information processing methods, and tethering devices for unmanned aerial vehicles which are tethered using tethers.

2. Description of the Related Art

It is necessary to implement safety measures so that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as drones and unmanned aircraft do not enter no-fly zones when flying over an event site to take photographs, for example. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-079034 discloses a technique for attaching a tether to an unmanned aerial vehicle and adjusting the length of the tether to restrict the range of flight for the unmanned aerial vehicle. With this, it is possible to implement a safety measure so that the unmanned aerial vehicle does not enter no-fly zones.

SUMMARY

However, when an unmanned aerial vehicle which is tethered using a tether such as that disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-079034 described above flies away from a tethering device a distance substantially equal to the maximum length of the tether, if the unmanned aerial vehicle attempts to move further away from the tethering device, the tension of the tether may change abruptly, causing a strong impact on the unmanned aerial vehicle. Depending on circumstances, the unmanned aerial vehicle may fly out of control and crash into the ground.

In view of this, an object of the present disclosure is to provide a control device, etc., which are capable of improving the safety of an unmanned aerial vehicle by keeping the unmanned aerial vehicle from being impacted by a tether.

A control device according to an aspect of the present disclosure includes a processor which is configured to: obtain first region information indicating a first region; obtain first position information indicating a position of an unmanned aerial vehicle tethered to a tethering device using a tether; and control the tethering device using the first region information and the first position information to cause the tether to have tension corresponding to a specified distance which is at least one of a shortest distance between a boundary of the first region and the position of the unmanned aerial vehicle and a distance included in a predetermined range from the shortest distance.

Note that the aforementioned general or specific aspects may be implemented using a system, a device, a method, an integrated circuit, a computer program, or a non-transitory computer-readable recording medium such as a compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), or any combination of systems, devices, methods, integrated circuits, computer programs, or recording media.

With the control device, etc., according to an aspect of the present disclosure, it is possible to improve the safety of an unmanned aerial vehicle by reducing impact on the unmanned aerial vehicle that is caused by a tether.

