Application No.
19/551,620
Filed
VerSky Protocol
Altitude-Direction Encoding Protocol for Air Traffic Management with Hexagonal Grid and Intersection Separation
- Confirmation
- 6812
- Claims
- 20
- Entity
- Micro
Patent filed · 27 February 2026
An air traffic protocol for drones, eVTOLs, and the next 50 years of low-altitude flight.
VerSky is an open protocol for low-altitude airspace. It encodes direction in altitude using a hexagonal grid — solving conflict resolution that classical ATC was never designed for.
ACTIVE FLIGHTS:47
AVG ALT:142m
CONFLICTS RESOLVED:0
ACTIVE HEX-CELLS:1240
PROTOCOL VERSION:v0.1-alpha
Initialising airspace…
↻ AUTO-ORBIT · LIVE PROTOCOL VISUALIZATION
How It Works
Three steps. One round-trip.
From flight intent to conflict resolution — entirely peer-to-peer with a cryptographically auditable trail.
01
Plan
Drone declares intent: route, altitude band, ETA. VerSky reserves a 4D space-time slot in the hex grid.
POST /reserve { route, altitude: 140, etaMs: 1200 }02
Fly
Drone broadcasts position + altitude continuously. Other vehicles subscribe and see the same airspace.
BROADCAST { id, lat, lng, alt: 140, dir: SE }03
Resolve
At intersections, drones negotiate P2P. Failure to agree triggers deterministic fallback. All decisions logged.
NEGOTIATE peer:0x4f3a → fallback: descend 20mUSPTO Filing Status
Two non-provisional applications. One protocol stack.
Both applications were filed on February 27, 2026 as Pro Se with Micro Entity status. Priority dates are locked.
Application No.
19/551,624
Filed
AACP
AI Aerial Communication Protocol with Peer-to-Peer Negotiation and Deterministic Fallback Resolution
- Confirmation
- 4598
- Claims
- 20
- Entity
- Micro
Backend processing note: A Patent Center backend issue is currently under remediation by USPTO (AAU manual processing as of May 2026). Filing date Feb 27, 2026 is preserved; full Filing Receipts are pending. Updates will be posted here.
0+
Hex Direction Bands
per altitude layer
0m
Design Ceiling
low-altitude airspace
0
Patent Claims
across two applications
0%
Open Protocol
Apache 2.0 + patent grant
Three Pillars
Why this protocol, and why now.
ICAO's rules were written for jets at flight levels. Below 500 metres, airspace will look more like a city street grid than a runway.
P1 · §3-§5
Altitude Encodes Direction
A hexagonal grid gives 6+ discrete heading bands per altitude layer. Aircraft at any altitude know which way they should be travelling — without negotiation.
P2 · Group H
P2P + AI Negotiation
Where altitude alone isn't enough — at intersections — vehicles negotiate peer-to-peer. If consensus fails, deterministic fallback rules resolve the conflict.
P2 · Group J + K
Open + Auditable
Every AI decision is logged with hash-chain integrity. Trust scores deter Sybil attacks. Court-admissible by design — not an afterthought.
Different from Classical ATC
Built for vehicles classical air traffic control was never designed for.
ICAO's 1950s semicircular rule assumes pilots, voice radio, and fuel reserves. Below 500 metres, none of those assumptions hold.
Classical ATC
VerSky Protocol
Designed For
Manned aircraft above flight levels
Unmanned aircraft below 500m
Conflict Resolution
Centralised ATC voice instructions
Peer-to-peer protocol negotiation
Direction Encoding
2 directions (East / West semicircular)
6+ directions per altitude band
Capacity
Linear corridors, manual reservation
Hexagonal cells with declared capacity
AI Decision Audit
Voice transcripts (manual review)
Hash-chained logs (court-admissible)
Failure Behaviour
Hold pattern (assumes fuel reserve)
Deterministic descent (assumes battery)
Adoption Pathways
Six audiences. One protocol stack.
Adoption begins with academic and hobbyist use, then enterprise SDKs, then regulatory standardisation.
Academic
Research & Reproducibility
An open protocol to test multi-agent control against. Cite the spec, build on the reference implementation.
Phase 2 →
Hobbyist
Recreational Drone Pilots
See nearby traffic before you take off. A free app layered on the same protocol regulators are evaluating.
Phase 2 →
Delivery
Drone Fleets at Scale
SDK for fleets of 10–10,000 vehicles. Replace bespoke deconfliction with a shared protocol layer.
Phase 2 →
eVTOL
Urban Air Mobility
Low-altitude air taxi corridors with built-in priority and fail-safe descent. Designed for the next decade.
Phase 2 →
Regulator
Aviation Authorities
Real-time airspace visibility. Hash-chained logs for accident investigation. No vendor lock-in.
Phase 2 →
Defense
Autonomous Swarms
P2P intent broadcasting with anti-Sybil trust scoring. Deterministic fallback for jammed environments.
Phase 2 →
Roadmap
Four years from filing to standard.
We're building this for adoption — which means publishing early, shipping reference code, and engaging standards bodies on their own timetable.
Phase 1·2026 Q1–Q2Active
Patents Filed · Whitepaper
USPTO non-provisional applications filed. Public whitepaper, reference architecture, this site.
▸
Phase 2·2026 Q3–Q4
Reference Implementation
Open source SDK (Python, C++). GitHub repo. Documentation site. Early academic partners.
3
Phase 3·2027
VerSky Cloud
REST/WebSocket telemetry ingestion. Hash-chained logs for accident investigation. Free + commercial tiers.
4
Phase 4·2027–2028
Standards Body Engagement
Submission to ASTM F38, ICAO RPAS Panel, EUROCAE WG-105. Industry pilots with drone OEMs.
5
Phase 5·2028–2030
Regulatory Adoption
Aviation authority dashboards. Mandatory compliance for commercial drone fleets. Global rollout.
From the Author
“The hardest part of an open protocol isn't the protocol — it's the patience to publish it before the standards body asks for it.”
VerSky was filed Pro Se with USPTO by a single inventor working alongside an orchestrated team of AI collaborators — Claude, GPT-5, Kimi, Gemini. The choice to file as Pro Se wasn't a constraint; it was the point. If the protocol can be authored and prosecuted by one careful human and modern tooling, it can be adopted by anyone.
— Jittapol Prukpatarakul, Bangkok · February 2026