Google Inc.

X Development LLC

Echelon Corporation

Apple Inc.

Echleon Corporation

Apple Comptuer, Inc.

Mark Adrian Stubbs

Philip H Sutterlin

Walter J Downey

Luna Chen

Kevin James Fleming McCloskey

Michael George Sleator

Kevin M Christiansen

Bruce E Eckstein

Manuel Roman

The locations of flowers on a plant, rather than the locations of agricultural products produced from such flowers, are used to facilitate the performance of harvesting and other agricultural operations in robotic agricultural applications. In some implementations, the identified location of a fruit-producing flower may be used by a robotic device to apply an indicator tag to a flowering plant proximate the flower for later identification when performing various types of directed and automated agricultural operations. In other implementations, the identified location of a fruit-producing flower may be used by a robotic device to anchor a stem of a flowering plant to a predetermined location such that the location of the flower, and of any fruit(s) later produced by such flower, are controlled and/or known when performing subsequent agricultural operations.

Tagging of fruit-producing flowers for robotic selective harvesting

Multiple devices may be simultaneously programmed using JTAG circuitry or a JTAG operation. The output of a master device's programming may be used to verify the programming of one or more slave devices. The comparison of the master device's programming output to a slave device's programming output may be handled by a logic circuit. The logic circuit may signal the result of the comparison by, for example, a LED.

Gang programming of devices

A computer-implemented method for electronic content management includes physically exposing an electric appliance to a power providing device that is arranged to provide electrical power to various electric appliances, including the electric appliance; automatically obtaining an electronic identifier for the electric appliance using the power providing device; and transmitting the electronic identifier from the power providing device to a remote computing system.

Identification of powered devices for energy saving

A method and apparatus for defining and generating a digital waveform such as used for the local oscillator for a down converter in a receiver is disclosed. The method and apparatus is particularly useful where the digital waveform is not an integer submultiple of a reference signal. A plurality of different digital waveforms meeting the timing criteria but having different combinations of segments needed to meet the timing criteria are generated. Each of the digital waveforms so generated are tested in, for instance, a receiver to enable the selection of the best combination of segments.

Method and apparatus for defining and generating local oscillator signals for down converter

A dual channel transceiver which operates at two different frequencies and which may be used in a network using older transceivers operating at a single frequency is disclosed. A pilot tone is transmitted by the transceiver when it is using the second channel to cause the older transfers to remain synchronized and thereby prevent them from transmitting data which would otherwise interfere with the data on the second channel. The relative magnitude of the signals on both channels is compared to prevent the detection of cross-talk on the second channel as data.

Transmission and detection of data in a dual channel transceiver

A &ldquo;hint&rdquo; signal is developed which points to suspected erroneous bits in received data by examining anomalies in the signal. More particularly, a delta phase pointer which quantifies one of the anomalies is used. The realigning of an IQ pointer provides an additional anomaly which is prioritized along with the delta phase pointer. The particular error correcting code used for the power line application provides seven check bits for a data byte and permits the correction of up to two errors. A third error is correctable through use of the hint signal and a parity bit.

Error correcting using signal anomaly as a hint

The present invention is directed to providing a computer system which arbitrates control of a shared bus among plural devices included in the computer system. In accordance with the present invention, at least one of the devices is afforded a higher priority than the remaining devices, yet none of the remaining devices are effectively denied system bus access or control for extended periods of time. The present invention can therefore increase operating efficiency even as the number of devices included in the computer system is increased to achieve enhanced processing power. In addition, the present invention can provide sophisticated multimedia features, including real time signal processing, without sacrificing overall operating efficiency. In accordance with the present invention, the plural devices arbitrate system bus control in a manner which achieves acceptable multimedia results when processing real time data streams such as video data streams, audio data streams, animation data streams, and so forth, yet which does not sacrifice the access of remaining devices in the computer system to the shared bus.

Growing community of inventors

Felton, CA, United States of America

Mark Adrian Stubbs