Bell Helicopter Textron, Fort Worth, Texas, has been assigned a patent (8,078,395) developed by Kenneth E. Builta, Euless, Texas, James E. Harris, Dalworthington Gardens, Texas, and Billy K. Gore, Euless, Texas, for a “control system for automatic circle flight.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A flight control system for an aircraft is configured for receiving command signals representing commanded values of a location of a geospatial point and a radius about the geospatial point for defining a circular groundtrack. A sensor determines a geospatial location of the aircraft and provides a location signal representing the location of the aircraft. A controller for commanding flight control devices on the aircraft controls the flight of the aircraft and is configured to receive the command signals and the location signal. The controller uses the command signals and location signal to operate the flight control devices to control the flight of the aircraft for directing the aircraft generally toward a tangent point of the circular groundtrack and then maintaining a flight path along the circular groundtrack.”

The patent application was filed on Nov. 15, 2005 (12/064,490). The full-text of the patent can be found here