US Patent Issued to Iowa State University Research Foundation on May 5 for "Robotic multicopter sampler for infield crop and soil health sensing and tissue sample collection" (Iowa Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,617,561, issued on May 5, was assigned to Iowa State University Research Foundation Inc. (Ames, Iowa).

"Robotic multicopter sampler for infield crop and soil health sensing and tissue sample collection" was invented by Lie Tang (Ames, Iowa) and Liang Dong (Ames, Iowa).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), such as a multicopter, can be equipped with unique tools for use in agricultural operations. For example, the tools can be acquisition tools that can acquire a physical sample from a growing plant, such as a crop. The tools could also acquire physical specimens from areas around the plants. In addition, the UAV c...