Croptimistic Technology has been awarded a U.S. patent for the SWAT CAM process, the company’s autonomous in-field imaging and crop analytics product. The patent, titled “Method and System for Automatically Capturing and Extracting Data From Images of Agricultural Field Crops and Weeds Using Machine Learning Processes,” recognizes Croptimistic’s innovations using artificial intelligence.
The announcement comes as SWAT CAM surpassed one million acres mapped in western Canada in 2025 in just it’s third season, marking a major commercialization milestone. Patent approvals in additional countries, including Canada, are expected to follow.
The technology was developed to replace the job of agronomists and farmers conducting manual plant stand counting, which is a labour-intensive job accomplished by driving to a field and counting at a few locations. During normal farming operations, SWAT CAM autonomously captures images every 60 feet from two cameras mounted on a field sprayer. With 1000’s of images per field, it applies machine learning models to extract crop and weed population data at scale. Agronomists and farmers can evaluate variability in crop establishment throughout the SWAT MAPS zones on fields across the entire farm without any vehicle or labour requirements. Farmers require consistent, optimum plant stands in zones and between fields to maximize their profitability in today’s expensive seed market.
For 2026, Croptimistic has significantly improved cereal crop plant stand counting models for wheat, oats, barley, and canary seed, while introducing new beta plant stand count models for lentils and flax. Plant count models are now predicting within six per cent of actual counts as the Croptimistic team continues to advance the accuracy and reliability of outcomes.
“SWAT CAM is more than a single model; it’s a continuously learning system, and every season’s data makes the next release sharper, more reliable, and more relevant to the growers who depend on it” says Erfan Khalaji, AI and Data Scientist at Croptimistic. “Every year more crop models and use cases are added.”
Hardware Director Mark Marianchuk states that “the SWAT CAM system was designed to autonomously capture high-quality imagery during dawn to dusk spraying operations in a compact format that easily mounts to the booms of any sprayer model.”
Systems Engineering Manager Jason Harmon adds, “our objective is to provide farmers low-cost, high-density crop establishment variability mapping”.
Croptimistic is currently field testing the next generation of SWAT CAM hardware, including upgraded camera systems, mounting designs, and on-board capabilities aimed at further improving the user experience and agronomic insight. In alignment with the company’s “Never Obsolete” philosophy, existing SWAT CAM users will receive the updated hardware systems when they become released at no additional cost.
SWAT CAM is only available to SWAT MAPS users as the analytics are directly related to SWAT MAPS zones. Other common uses include variable-rate on/off fungicide maps when satellite imagery is poor or unavailable due to clouds or smoke. A few systems are still in stock and available for spring 2026. Contact support@swatmaps.com to order.
