Laser guidance system for crop spraying aircraft

Abstract

This invention provides a method for controlling the path of a crop spraying aircraft in making repeated traverses over a field to insure that each traverse is laterally spaced from the adjacent traverse by the proper distance to assure adequate coverage of the crop land with the material being sprayed and avoiding over-lapping or insufficient coverage of any portion of the crop land. In accordance with the method of the invention, the crop spraying aircraft carries a rotating laser beam transmitter and receiver, and the transmitted beam is reflected from a plurality of reflectors located on the ground at known positions relative to each other to provide successive reflections of the transmitted laser beam from which the angular positions of the aircraft relative to the reflectors may be continuously determined. After an initial pass over the field to establish the spray path, the position of the aircraft may be continuously computed by a microprocessor and an error signal generated during each subsequent pass to indicate to the aircraft operator whether the aircraft should be steered more to the right or left to stay on the desired spraying path.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.