ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,355,138, issued on July 8, was assigned to EarthScout LLC (Brooklyn Park, Minn.).
"Underground telemetry device" was invented by Michael Immer (Minneapolis), Troy Schmidtke (Minneapolis), Dipesh Karki (Minneapolis) and Jerry Thompson (Minneapolis).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A containment housing contains environment probes and a data transmit module below grade of a field. A breakaway antenna assembly couples to the data module and transmits data from the sensors real time. The breakaway antenna includes a 360-degree hinge and is self-righting, thereby allowing farm implements to move past the antenna without breaking antenna."
The pa...