Patent ID: 11944087
Assignee: DEERE & COMPANY
Field: Other special machines (Mechanical engineering)
Classification: CPC A  G | IPC A  G

Claim 19:
20. An agricultural machine that is controllable to travel across a field in a direction of travel, comprising:
a material reservoir;
a boom having an elongate axis that is transverse to an elongate axis of the agricultural machine;
a plurality of controllable valves mounted across the boom;
a plurality of optical sensors that each capture images of a portion of the field ahead of the plurality of controllable valves in the direction of travel;
a plurality of image processing modules mounted to the boom, each image processing module receiving images from a different set of optical sensors in the plurality of optical sensors, wherein the plurality of controllable valves include a plurality of different sets of controllable valves, each optical sensor capturing a corresponding image with a field of view corresponding to one of the plurality of different sets of controllable valves;
a calibration system that identifies a fixed mark, that is fixedly attached to the boom and located to be in the field of view of an image corresponding to a selected optical sensor, the calibration system comparing a position of the fixed mark in the image corresponding to the selected optical sensor to a reference position to identify an orientation of the selected optical sensor on the boom and generate an orientation output indicative of the identified orientation;
a pump that pumps material from the material reservoir to the plurality of controllable valves;
a target identification system that identifies targets in the images captured by the plurality of optical sensors; and
a valve controller that generates a valve control signal to control the plurality of controllable valves to apply the material to the targets.