WEEK 19 – Invention, Intellectual Property, and Income

Individual Assignment

• Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project
• Complete your final project, tracking your progress:
  • What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?
  • What's working? What’s not?
  • What questions need to be resolved?
  • What will happen when?
  • What have you learned?

1. Project Scope and Intellectual Property

SloshX explores liquid dispensing and control for agricultural-drone applications. My Fab Academy demonstrator combines custom mechanical components, electronics, flow sensing, camera-based colour recognition and a BLE remote interface.

Only the non-confidential aspects of the project have been presented in my Fab Academy documentation. The underlying invention intended for patent protection has not been demonstrated in the final project.

I am currently preparing applications for utility-model and invention patent protection in China relating to this confidential invention. These applications are in preparation; no patent grant is claimed.

My approach is selective dissemination: sharing the non-confidential development and learning while keeping the undisclosed invention separate.

2. Dissemination and Licensing Plan

The dissemination plan aims to raise awareness of the demonstrator, obtain feedback and identify suitable users and development partners without disclosing confidential technical details.

AUDIENCE	PURPOSE	CHANNEL and MATERIAL
Fab Academy Evaluators and Makers	Explain my iFab Academy website, non-confidential design/code files, poster and demonstration video	Fab Academy website, non-confidential design/code files, poster and demonstration video
Potential Users and Customers	Understand needs, existing practices and possible applications	Interviews, meetings and controlled demonstrations using non-confidential material
University innovation and research-support teams	Discuss intellectual property, market validation and development support	Internal discussions and project-review processes
Potential industry partners	Explore technical fit and future collaboration	Non-confidential project summary, followed by appropriately managed technical discussions

Potential audiences include agricultural-drone operators, spraying-service providers and equipment manufacturers. These are initial hypotheses, not yet confirmed target markets.

Licensing decision:

I have not yet selected an additional project-specific open-source licence for the original material shared publicly. I will clarify the applicable Fab Academy and university requirements before finalising this decision.

The confidential invention is not included in the material intended for public dissemination. Any future licence will clearly identify the files and material it covers. Third-party code and libraries will retain their original licence notices and attribution.

ACTUAL LICENSING DECISION BEFORE FINAL EVALUATION: This project's original, non-confidential documentation, design files and code are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. No patent or trademark rights are granted. Third-party code and libraries retain their original licences.

3. Funding, Income and Future Development

I have submitted a Proof of Concept funding application to my university. Its purpose is to better identify the target market and users, rather than assume that the current concept already meets a validated commercial need.

If successful, the proposed work would investigate:

• Who experiences the problem and how they currently address it.
• Which applications offer the strongest need and practical fit.
• What users require in terms of performance, installation, maintenance and cost.
• Whether there is sufficient interest to justify further development.

The findings could support a subsequent application for development or implementation funding. Neither funding stage is guaranteed.

Possible future income routes include licensing the protected technology, co-development with an equipment manufacturer, or supplying a validated product/module. No route has yet been selected. The choice will depend on user evidence, technical feasibility, intellectual-property arrangements and development costs.

4. Progress and Outstanding Work

This part of the documentation is retrospective, so some details may be approximate, but it remains very close to what actually happened. By that time, I had already completed the design and production of all the 3D-printed components and assembled them successfully. The flow-rate sensor, MaixCam, onboard electronics and code were all integrated, connected and tested successfully on the drone during that week.

5. Questions to Resolve and Schedule

However, during that week I realised that one essential requirement was still missing: a custom PCB with a soldered microcontroller. The main controller and dispensing electronics, built around an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi, were not sufficient to meet the assessment requirements. I therefore decided to design a remote controller based on a XIAO ESP32-C3, with a 0.96-inch OLED display, a start/stop button and three LEDs, running custom code to communicate with the drone's onboard electronics.

I still had to produce my final project poster and video in time for Presentation Day on 10 June.

6. What I Learned

• The project taught me that successful development depends on the interfaces between components as much as on the components themselves. Mechanical fit, mounting, connection access, cable routing, programming and communication all needed consideration together. 😃 😃 😃

• Spiral development helped me divide a complex project into manageable iterations and refine the design as integration issues emerged. The late addition of the remote controller also highlighted the need to reserve time for packaging and complete-system testing. 😃 😃 😃

• I learned to distinguish a functioning demonstrator from a validated product. Technical operation, user demand, anti-slosh performance and commercial potential are separate questions requiring different evidence. 😃 😃 😃

• Finally, the project required me to balance public documentation with confidentiality and to separate what could be demonstrated openly from what required further intellectual-property work. 😃 😃 😃