Patent ID: 11856882
Assignee: KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC A  G  B | IPC A  B  G

Claim 0:
1. A method of autonomously farming a field having steep terrain comprising:
performing a farming operation within the field using at least one ground-based drone, at least a portion of the field upon which the farming operation is performed has a grade of at least 10%;
servicing the at least one drone with at least one unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) while the at least one ground-based drone is within the field;
communicating at least one of an amount of energy used and an amount of time taken by the at least one drone and the at least one UAV to traverse between at least two sites within the field to an autonomous farming control system, the autonomous farming control system generating a time and/or energy optimized route plan for the at least one drone and the at least one UAV within the field using linearly constrained integer quadratic programming; and
communicating instructions to the at least one drone and the at least one UAV for carrying out the optimized route plans.