San Diego, California, USA
August 19, 2021
SlantRange has received its 10th patent, and the company’s first in the European Union.
Patent 3,192,260, issued by the European Patent Office, covers SlantRange’s sunlight calibration technology that enables accurate crop measurement, prescriptions, and forecasting from crop imagery.
“We are encouraged by the European Patent Office’s decision to grant this patent,” SlantRange CEO Mike Ritter said. “Securing the intellectual property for foundational technologies and providing our customers freedom to operate is a priority for our company, especially given how broadly adopted this technology is today.”
SlantRange also holds patents in the United States, Canada, and Australia for this technology.
Why This Technology Matters
Color or spectral imagery can be used to infer plant chemical and physical composition, maturity, nutrient uptake, hydration, pest pressures, and species distributions, among other agronomically valuable traits. The ability to measure these variables throughout a plant’s development, or in response to input decisions or stress conditions, enables new crop forecasting and crop management models that will drive a future of more efficient and sustainable farming.
However, these measurements are only useful if the effects of changing sunlight conditions are properly measured and corrected, as they are in SlantRange’s technology.
SlantRange’s solution is commonly referred to as a “sunshine sensor,” “downwelling sunlight sensor,” or “incident light sensor,” together with the related software tools that perform the correction.
This technology is essential for the broad-based, scalable use of aerial imaging (e.g., color, multispectral, hyperspectral) in agriculture and enables:
- Classification of plant type and health
- Comparisons of measurements over time for trend analysis
- Development and application of targeted input prescriptions in precision agriculture
- Modeling and forecasting of future crop conditions
Secure Technology for Your Digital Agriculture Investments
SlantRange’s clients include many of the world’s leading agricultural input suppliers and producers, whose precision and digital agriculture platforms depend on a secure intellectual property foundation.
To provide enterprise-level solutions for its clients, SlantRange products are built upon an extensive portfolio of patented technologies spanning remote sensing to data science to computational methods. You can learn more about this patent, along with other patents SlantRange holds at its intellectual property page.
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