Other

United States of America, as Represented by the Secretary of Agriculture

Michael E Gvili

Mathew G Pelletier

A process for measuring the moisture content and the mass-moisture content of materials is presented that requires no air reference or calibration sequence. A microwave signal is split into a reference and a transmission signal, and the reference signal is applied directly to the phase detector, whereas the transmission signal is first transmitted through the sample before being presented to the other side of the phase detector. This measurement provides a phase-constant measurement that is due to the dielectric characteristics of the material under test. The system measures the material's phase-constant across a band of frequencies. The slope of the phase-constant versus frequency is then utilized to predict the density of the material which is then combined with the corrected phase-constant measurement to calculate the moisture content of the material.

Moisture measurement system for seed cotton or lint

A method and apparatus for continuously prompting a pilot to manually control and guide a vehicle along a selected line segment of a pattern of coverage of a target area. An on-board receiver and computer receives navigation reference signals, computes navigation parameters and generates navigation signals to an indicator. The indicator is placed within the normal forward field of outside vision of the vehicle's pilot. In a virtual flagman mode, the indicator has lower and upper horizontal lightbars on which discreet lights are illuminated to the left or right of the centerpoint to simulate the relative lateral position of actual flagmen at the beginning and end points of the line segment being tracked. In a flight director mode, the indicator shows a composite sum of factored navigation parameters including angle of intercept between the line segment and vehicle track, perpendicular distance of the vehicle from the line segment, and rate of turn of the vehicle, as a control instruction to the pilot. The system may include audible tone or voice prompts as well.

Growing community of inventors

Wayland, MA, United States of America

Michael E Gvili