US Patent Issued to Precision Planting on March 4 for "Apparatus and methods for measuring soil conditions" (Illinois Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,239,038, issued on March 4, was assigned to Precision Planting LLC (Tremont, Ill.).

"Apparatus and methods for measuring soil conditions" was invented by Dillon Sloneker (Danvers, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An apparatus for measuring a soil condition includes a shank configured to engage with a drawbar, an array of movable pads carried by the shank, and a plurality of sensors. Each of the movable pads are spaced at different distances from a point at which the shank is configured to engage the drawbar. Each sensor is coupled to at least one movable pad of the array of movable pads and configured to measure deflection of the at l...