US 12,169,413 B2
Autonomous scouting using unmanned aerial vehicle
Sergey Yaroshenko, Newark, CA (US); and Cameron Cruz, San Francisco, CA (US)
Assigned to DEERE &COMPANY, Moline, IL (US)
Filed by Deere & Company, Moline, IL (US)
Filed on Dec. 9, 2022, as Appl. No. 18/064,079.
Prior Publication US 2024/0192693 A1, Jun. 13, 2024
Int. Cl. G05D 1/00 (2024.01); B64U 20/87 (2023.01); B64U 50/30 (2023.01); B64U 101/30 (2023.01); B64U 101/40 (2023.01)
CPC G05D 1/101 (2013.01) [B64U 20/87 (2023.01); B64U 50/30 (2023.01); B64U 2101/30 (2023.01); B64U 2101/40 (2023.01); B64U 2201/10 (2023.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of autonomous scouting, the method comprising:
determining an initial flight path above a crop field for an unmanned aerial vehicle to fly along, wherein the unmanned aerial vehicle includes (i) one or more sensors, and (ii) an edge-computing device having one or more processors and a memory locally storing at least a first trained machine learning model; and
operating the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly at a first height along the initial flight path, wherein operating the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly at the first height along the initial flight path includes:
operating a first sensor of the one or more sensors of the unmanned aerial vehicle to collect images for the crop field at a first frequency;
for each image of the collected images, processing a respective image using the first trained machine learning model in response to the respective image being collected by the first sensor, wherein the first trained machine learning model processes the respective image to generate a respective output that indicates whether a respective target region is detected within the crop field;
determining, based on the respective outputs generated by the first trained machine learning model in processing the collected images, one or more target regions within the crop field; and
determining, based on the one or more target regions, one or more stops of a reversed flight path for the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly along at a second height, wherein determining the one or more stops includes:
clustering the one or more target regions; and
determining the one or more stops of the reversed flight path based on the clustering.