Appeal No. 96-1460
Application 07/882,811
Appellants have appealed to the Board from the examiner’s
final rejection of claims 1 to 16, which constitute all the
claims in the application.
Representative claim 1 is reproduced below:
1. A prescription farming control system for use in
controlling product delivery mechanisms mounted on an
applicator vehicle, the delivery mechanisms operable to
deliver product to spreader mechanisms for spreading products
over an agricultural field, each of the product delivery
mechanisms having a device controller which controls the rate
of operation of the corresponding delivery mechanism in
response to a control signal derived in accordance with a
prescription for the field, the control system comprising:
means for storing in a digital memory information
defining a digital map representative of the prescription for
the field, the map being defined by a number of layers, each
layer corresponding to one of the product delivery mechanisms,
and each layer including a number of zones, each zone
corresponding to a rate of application of the corresponding
product in accordance with the prescription for the field at a
plurality of global positions within the zone;
means for storing a data table containing control signal
values for each of said number of zones in each of said number
of layers, said control signal values being indicative of the
rate of application of the product associated with a
corresponding layer at positions of the vehicle within a
corresponding zone;
navigation means for determining the current position of
the applicator vehicle on the agricultural field in global
coordinates as the vehicle moves over the field; and
means for transmitting, to each device controller,
selected ones of said control signal values corresponding to
said zone of each layer for which the determined current
2
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Last modified: November 3, 2007