Automated pruning or harvesting system for complex morphology foliage
OwnerKeith Charles Burdeninventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Method and apparatus for automated operations, such as pruning, harvesting, spraying and/or maintenance, on plants, and particularly plants with foliage having features on many length scales or a wide spectrum of length scales, such as female flower buds of the marijuana plant. The invention utilizes a convolutional neural network for image segmentation classification and/or the determination of features. The foliage is imaged stereoscopically to produce a three-dimensional surface image, a first neural network determines regions to be operated on, and a second neural network determines how an operation tool operates on the foliage. For pruning of resinous foliage the cutting tool is heated or cooled to avoid having the resins make the cutting tool inoperable.
Claims28
A method for use of a first convolutional neural network for determination of automated operations on a workpiece based on region classifications of said workpiece generated by said first convolutional neural network, said workpiece having first workpiece features of a first characteristic length scale and second workpiece features of a second characteristic length scale, said first characteristic length scale being larger than said second characteristic length scale, comprising:
- generating a tiled image of said workpiece, said tiled image being an array of abutting tiles, a tile size of said tiles corresponding to a first distance on said workpiece being dependent on said first characteristic length scale, a separation between adjacent pixels in said tiles corresponding to a second distance on said workpiece being dependent on said second characteristic length scale;
- providing pixel data of one of said tiles to an input of said first convolution neural network, said first convolution neural network having a first convolution layer utilizing a first number of first convolution feature maps, said first convolution feature maps having a first feature map size, said first convolution layer outputting first convolution output data used by at least one downstream convolution feature map to generate said region classifications.
An automated cutting tool for cutting a resinous plant, comprising:
- a pivot having a pivot axis;
- a fixed blade, said fixed blade having a first pivot end near said pivot and a first terminal end distal said first pivot end;
- a rotatable blade mounted to said pivot and rotatable on said pivot about said pivot axis in a plane of rotation, said rotatable blade having a second pivot end near said pivot and a second terminal end distal said second pivot end, said rotatable blade being rotatable on said pivot between an open position where said first and second distal ends are separated and a closed position where said fixed and rotatable blades are substantially aligned, said pivot providing translational play of said rotatable blade in said plane of rotation, said pivot providing rotational play of said rotatable blade about a longitudinal axis of said rotatable blade and about an axis orthogonal to said longitudinal axis of said rotatable blade and said pivot axis;
- a first biasing mechanism which biases said rotatable blade to said open position;
- a second biasing mechanism which biases said second distal end of said rotatable blade orthogonal to said plane of rotation and in a direction of said fixed blade;
- and
- a blade control mechanism for applying a force to rotate said rotatable blade against said first biasing mechanism and towards said closed position.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.