PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16184686
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-11
Publication Date: 2019-05
Patent Classification: ["702", "005000"]

Abstract:
Systems, and methods for controlling a modular system for improved real-time yield monitoring and sensor fusion of crops in an orchard are disclosed. According to some embodiments of the invention, a modular system for improved real-time yield monitoring and sensor fusion may include a collection vehicle, a modular processing unit, a volume measurement module, a three-dimensional point-cloud scanning module, an inertial navigation system, and a post-processing server. As the collection vehicle travels through an orchard, the volume measurement module calculates volume measurements of the windrow, the three-dimensional point-cloud scanning module assembles point-clouds of each plant in the orchard, and the inertial navigation system calculates geodetic positions of the collection vehicle. The modular processing unit may fuse the collected data together and transmit the fused data set to a post-processing server. The post-processing server may process the geodetic position data for errors which may be used for geo-referencing the fused data.

Claim (Index 1):
A yield monitoring and sensor fusion system comprising:\n a collection vehicle configured to transport a modular processing unit comprising:\n a scanning device configured to: assemble a three-dimensional point cloud representation of one or more plants utilizing waveform Light Detection and Ranging (\u201cLiDAR\u201d), and associate the three-dimensional point cloud representation of the one or more plants with a time-stamp; \n a volume processing device that is configured to: generate a plurality of volume measurements by calculating a plurality of volume cross-sections utilizing LiDAR, and associate the plurality of volume measurements with a time-stamp, and \n an inertial navigation system that is configured to: calculate one or more geodetic positions of the collection vehicle using an Inertial Measurement Unit (\u201cIMU\u201d) and a Global Positioning System (\u201cGPS\u201d), and associate the one or more geodetic positions with a time-stamp, \n wherein the modular processing unit is configured to: fuse the plurality of volume measurements, the one or more geodetic positions, and the three-dimensional point cloud representation of the one or more plants together using their associated time-stamps, and transmit the fused data; \n a variable rate dispenser mounted to the collection vehicle and coupled to the modular processing unit, wherein the variable rate dispenser is configured to dispense a fluid at rate that dynamically varies based on a variable rate map and a position of the collection vehicle; and a server configured to:\n receive transmissions from the modular processing unit; \n associate a plant with one or more of the plurality of volume measurements based on the three-dimensional point cloud representation and a set of corrected geodetic positioning data, \n determine a volume of crop produced by the plant based on the plurality of volume measurements, \n determine whether the plant needs treatment by comparing the volume of crop produced by the plant with a predetermined yield estimate, and \n upon determining that the plant needs treatment, instruct the variable rate dispenser to apply a higher dosage of fluid to the plant using the three-dimensional point cloud representation of the plant, and the set of corrected geodetic positioning data.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 18.0
- Percentile: 98.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.29167
- Patent Class: 702.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15418562', '15209689', '15977771', '15466298', '15324581']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.1872865976348162
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5747778419700069
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.2260357220683353
- Mean Citation Score: 309.85178
- Max Citation Score: 488.36264000000006
- Similarity Product: 376.8559548757648

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test