Iron Ox, Inc.

X Development LLC

Brandon Ace Alexander

Jonathan Binney

Winnie Ding

Nicole Bergelin

Jonathan BInney

Zachary Wielgosz

Abraham Galton Bachrach

Roger William Graves

Leila Takayama

Justin Sadowski

One variation of a method for automating transfer of plants within an agricultural facility includes: dispatching a loader to autonomously deliver a first module&#x2014;defining a first array of plant slots at a first density and loaded with a first set of plants at a first growth stage&#x2014;from a first grow location within an agricultural facility to a transfer station within the agricultural facility; dispatching the loader to autonomously deliver a second module&#x2014;defining a second array of plant slots at a second density less than the first density and empty of plants&#x2014;to the transfer station; recording a module-level optical scan of the first module; extracting a viability parameter of the first set of plants from features detected in the module-level optical scan; and if the viability parameter falls outside of a target viability range, rejecting transfer of the first set of plants from the first module.

Method for automating transfer of plants within an agricultural facility

One variation of a method for monitoring growth of plants within a facility includes: aggregating global ambient data recorded by a suite of fixed sensors, arranged proximal a grow area within the facility, at a first frequency during a grow period; extracting interim outcomes of a set of plants, occupying a module in the grow area, from module-level images recorded by a mover at a second frequency less than the first frequency while interfacing with the module during the period of time; dispatching the mover to autonomously deliver the module to a transfer station; extracting interim outcomes of the set of plants from plant-level images recorded by the transfer station while sequentially transferring plants out of the module at the conclusion of the grow period; and deriving relationships between ambient conditions, interim outcomes, and final outcomes from a corpus of plant records associated with plants grown in the facility.

Method for monitoring growth of plants and generating a plant grow schedule

One variation of a method for deploying sensors within an agricultural facility includes: accessing scan data of a set of modules deployed within the agricultural facility; extracting characteristics of plants occupying the set of modules from the scan data; selecting a first subset of target modules from the set of modules, each target module in the set of target modules containing a group of plants exhibiting characteristics representative of plants occupying modules neighboring the target module; for each target module, scheduling a robotic manipulator within the agricultural facility to remove a particular plant from a particular plant slot in the target module and load the particular plant slot with a sensor pod from a population of sensor pods deployed in the agricultural facility; and monitoring environmental conditions at target modules in the first subset of target modules based on sensor data recorded by the first population of sensor pods.

Method for selectively deploying sensors within an agricultural facility

One variation of a method for automatically redistributing plants throughout an agricultural facility includes, at a mobile robotic system: delivering a first module&#x2014;defining a first array of plant slots at a first density and loaded with a first set of plants in approximately a second growth stage&#x2014;from a grow area within a facility to a transfer station within the facility; delivering a second module&#x2014;located within the facility and defining a second array of plant slots at a second density less than the first density&#x2014;to the transfer station; and following transfer of a first subset of plants from the first array of plant slots in the first module into the second array of plant slots in the second module at the transfer station, delivering the second module to the grow area in the facility.

Method for automatically redistributing plants throughout an agricultural facility

System and method for automating transfer of plants within an agricultural facility

One variation of method for monitoring growth of plants within a facility includes: aggregating global ambient data recorded by a suite of fixed sensors, arranged proximal a grow area within the facility, at a first frequency during a grow period; extracting interim outcomes of a set of plants, occupying a module in the grow area, from module-level images recorded by a mover at a second frequency less than the first frequency while interfacing with the module during the period of time; dispatching the mover to autonomously deliver the module to a transfer station; extracting interim outcomes of the set of plants from plant-level images recorded by the transfer station while sequentially transferring plants out of the module at the conclusion of the grow period; and deriving relationships between ambient conditions, interim outcomes, and final outcomes from a corpus of plant records associated with plants grown in the facility.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is disclosed that may allow for supervisory control interaction by a remote operator to assist with navigation to a target location. The UAV may navigate to a target area and capture and send an image of the target area to the remote operator. The remote operator can then provide a user input that indicates a target location within the target area. Upon receiving an indication of the target area, the UAV can then autonomously navigate to the target location. In some examples, after reaching the target location, the UAV may initiate delivery of a payload at the target location using a retractable delivery system while the UAV hovers above.

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San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Brandon Ace Alexander