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

Claim 14:
15. A method of autonomous farming using at least one ground-based drone and at least one unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the method comprising:
inputting information regarding the topography of a field of arable land to be farmed into an autonomous farming control system, the information including the identification of a plurality of planting sites within the field;
transmitting information from the at least one drone and the at least one UAV to the autonomous farming control system, the information comprising—
a) at least one of an amount of energy used and an amount of time taken by the at least one drone to traverse between planting sites p1 and p2 within the field, and
b) at least one of an amount of energy used and an amount of time taken by the at least one UAV to traverse between rendezvous sites x1 and x2 within the field;

converting, within one or more low rank updates modules of the autonomous farming control system, the information received from the at least one drone and the at least one UAV and the field topography information into distance matrices DG and DA;
inputting the distance matrices DG and DA and at least one physical parameter associated with the at least one drone and the at least one UAV into a linearly constrained integer quadratic programming (LCIQP) module and outputting from the LCIQP module a time and/or energy optimized route plan for the at least one drone and the at least one UAV; and
transmitting instructions to the at least one drone and the at least one UAV for following the time and/or energy optimized route plans.