The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 30, 2003
Filed:
Aug. 26, 2002
Brian P. Hanley, Greenbrae, CA (US);
Other;
Abstract
Agricultural operations by applying flexible manufacturing software, robotics and sensing techniques to agriculture. In manufacturing operations utilizing flexible machining and flexible assembly robots, work pieces flow through a fixed set of workstations on an assembly line. At different stations are located machine vision systems, laser based raster devices, radar, touch, photocell, and other methods of sensing; flexible robot armatures and the like are used to operate on them. This flexible agricultural automation turns that concept inside out, moving software programmable workstations through farm fields on mobile robots that can sense their environment and respond to it flexibly. The agricultural automation will make it possible for large scale farming to take up labor intensive farming practices which are currently only practical for small scale farming, improving land utilization efficiency, while lowering manpower costs dramatically.