scholarly journals COMPARING COMMERCIAL OPTICAL SENSORS FOR CROP MONITORING TASKS IN PRECISION VITICULTURE

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Mazzetto ◽  
Aldo Calcante ◽  
Aira Mena

The emergence of precision agriculture technologies and an increasing demand for higher quality grape products has led to a growing interest in Precision Viticulture. Actually, cultural monitoring is the most important application in PV systems: it requires specific technologies able to investigate the cultural conditions. To this aim, typically remote sensing surveys are adopted. These, anyhow, involve technical, economical and organisational barriers hampering a wide diffusion of their application. In order to overcome these problems, it would be necessary to substitute and/or integrate remote sensing information with alternative ground sensing technologies, to be employed directly inside the vineyard. This paper considers a commercial optical sensor, the GreenSeeker, useful in ground sensing surveys, and it compares its performances in monitoring vine with results obtained by a multispectral digital camera used as a tester. The experimentation was carried out in a greenhouse, on an artificial row including 15 grapevines (Cabernet Sauvignon variety). In front of the row, it was fixed a metallic rail gauge in order to permit a longitudinal movement of the Greenseeker sensor. Each plant was investigated at three different heights with a 5 s data time acquisition. Simultaneously, photos of the same grapevine were took by a multispectral digital camera, in order to obtain NDVI values through image analysis. The multispectral digital camera, normally used for remote sensing survey in agriculture, was considered as a test. Results demonstrate a strength correlation (R2 = 0.97) between the NDVI values measured through the two methods. This shows the same behaviour of the two tools, according to crop vigour and stress conditions induced into the plants. Consequently the GreenSeeker can be considered as a suitable solution for cultural monitoring in viticulture.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 6668
Author(s):  
Laura García ◽  
Lorena Parra ◽  
Jose M. Jimenez ◽  
Jaime Lloret ◽  
Pedro V. Mauri ◽  
...  

The increase in the world population has led to new needs for food. Precision Agriculture (PA) is one of the focuses of these policies to optimize the crops and facilitate crop management using technology. Drones have been gaining popularity in PA to perform remote sensing activities such as photo and video capture as well as other activities such as fertilization or scaring animals. These drones could be used as a mobile gateway as well, benefiting from its already designed flight plan. In this paper, we evaluate the adequacy of remote sensing drones to perform gateway functionalities, providing a guide for choosing the best drone parameters for successful WiFi data transmission between sensor nodes and the gateway in PA systems for crop monitoring and management. The novelty of this paper compared with existing mobile gateway proposals is that we are going to test the performance of the drone that is acting as a remote sensing tool to carry a low-cost gateway node to gather the data from the nodes deployed on the field. Taking this in mind, simulations of different scenarios were performed to determine if the data can be transmitted correctly or not considering different flying parameters such as speed (from 1 to 20 m/s) and flying height (from 4 to 104 m) and wireless sensor network parameters such as node density (1 node each 60 m2 to 1 node each 5000 m2) and antenna coverage (25 to 200 m). We have calculated the time that each node remains with connectivity and the time required to send the data to estimate if the connection will be bad, good, or optimal. Results point out that for the maximum node density, there is only one combination that offers good connectivity (lowest velocity, the flying height of 24 m, and antenna with 25 m of coverage). For the other node densities, several combinations of flying height and antenna coverage allows good and optimal connectivity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Cuaran ◽  
Jose Leon

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have been developed significantly over the past two decades, for a wide variety of applications such as surveillance, geographic studies, fire monitoring, security, military applications, search and rescue, agriculture, etc. In agriculture, for example, remote sensing by means of unmanned aerial vehicles has proven to be the most efficient way to monitor crops from images. Unlike remote sensing from satellite images or taken from manned aircraft, UAVs allow capturing images of high spatial and temporal resolution, thanks to their maneuverability and capability of flying at low altitude. This article presents an extensive review of the literature on crop monitoring by UAV, identifying specific applications, types of vehicles, sensors, image processing techniques, among others. A total of 50 articles related to crop monitoring applications of UAV in agriculture were reviewed. Only journal articles indexed in the Scopus database with more than 50 citations were considered. It was found that cereals are the most common crops where remote sensing has been applied so far. In addition, the most common crop remote sensing applications are related to precision agriculture, which includes the management of weeds, pests, diseases, nutrients and others. Crop phenotyping is also a common application of remote sensing, which consists of the evaluation of a crop’s physical characteristics under environmental changes, to select the plants or seeds with favorable genotype and phenotype. Besides, multirotor is the most common type of UAV used for remote sensing and RGB and multispectral cameras are mostly used as sensors for this application. Finally, there is a great opportunity for research in remote sensing related to a wide variety of crops, crop monitoring applications, vegetation indexes and photogrammetry.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 457
Author(s):  
Rigas Giovos ◽  
Dimitrios Tassopoulos ◽  
Dionissios Kalivas ◽  
Nestor Lougkos ◽  
Anastasia Priovolou

One factor of precision agriculture is remote sensing, through which we can monitor vegetation health and condition. Much research has been conducted in the field of remote sensing and agriculture analyzing the applications, while the reviews gather the research on this field and examine different scientific methodologies. This work aims to gather the existing vegetation indices used in viticulture, which were calculated from imagery acquired by remote sensing platforms such as satellites, airplanes and UAVs. In this review we present the vegetation indices, the applications of these and the spatial distribution of the research on viticulture from the early 2000s. A total of 143 publications on viticulture were reviewed; 113 of them had used remote sensing methods to calculate vegetation indices, while the rejected ones have used proximal sensing methods. The findings show that the most used vegetation index is NDVI, while the most frequently appearing applications are monitoring and estimating vines water stress and delineation of management zones. More than half of the publications use multitemporal analysis and UAVs as the most used among remote sensing platforms. Spain and Italy are the countries with the most publications on viticulture with one-third of the publications referring to regional scale whereas the others to site-specific/vineyard scale. This paper reviews more than 90 vegetation indices that are used in viticulture in various applications and research topics, and categorized them depending on their application and the spectral bands that they are using. To summarize, this review is a guide for the applications of remote sensing and vegetation indices in precision viticulture and vineyard assessment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (6Supl2) ◽  
pp. 2917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas de Paula Corrêdo ◽  
Francisco de Assis de Carvalho Pinto ◽  
Domingos Savio Queiroz ◽  
Domingos Sárvio Magalhães Valente ◽  
Flora Maria de Melo Villar

The use of optical sensors to identify the nutritional needs of agricultural crops has been the subject of several studies using precision agriculture techniques. In this work, we sought to overcome the lack of research evaluating the use of these techniques in the management of nitrogen (N) fertilizer in pastures. We evaluated the methodology of the nitrogen sufficiency index (NSI) in N management at variable rates (VR) using a portable chlorophyll meter. In addition, the use of color vegetation indices generated from a digital camera was evaluated as a low-cost alternative. The work was conducted in four management cycles at different times of year, evaluating the productivity and quality of Brachiaria brizantha cv. Xaraés grass. Three NSIs (0.85, 0.90 and 0.95) were evaluated, applying complementary doses of N according to the response of monitored plots using a chlorophyll meter and comparing the productivity and leaf N content of these treatments to the reference treatment (TREF), which received a single dose of N (150 kg ha-1). Together with these treatments, plots without N application (control) were analyzed, totaling five treatments with six replications in a completely randomized design. The dry mass productivity and N leaf concentration of the VR treatments were statistically equal to TREF in all management cycles (P < 0.05). Most color vegetation indices correlated significantly (P < 0.05) to the chlorophyll readings. The use of NSI methodology in pastures allows the same productivity gains, with significant input savings. In addition, the use of digital cameras presents itself as a viable alternative to monitoring the N status in pastures.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Piekarczyk

AbstractWith increasing intensity of agricultural crop production increases the need to obtain information about environmental conditions in which this production takes place. Remote sensing methods, including satellite images, airborne photographs and ground-based spectral measurements can greatly simplify the monitoring of crop development and decision-making to optimize inputs on agricultural production and reduce its harmful effects on the environment. One of the earliest uses of remote sensing in agriculture is crop identification and their acreage estimation. Satellite data acquired for this purpose are necessary to ensure food security and the proper functioning of agricultural markets at national and global scales. Due to strong relationship between plant bio-physical parameters and the amount of electromagnetic radiation reflected (in certain ranges of the spectrum) from plants and then registered by sensors it is possible to predict crop yields. Other applications of remote sensing are intensively developed in the framework of so-called precision agriculture, in small spatial scales including individual fields. Data from ground-based measurements as well as from airborne or satellite images are used to develop yield and soil maps which can be used to determine the doses of irrigation and fertilization and to take decisions on the use of pesticides.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Kirkeby ◽  
Klas Rydhmer ◽  
Samantha M. Cook ◽  
Alfred Strand ◽  
Martin T. Torrance ◽  
...  

AbstractWorldwide, farmers use insecticides to prevent crop damage caused by insect pests, while they also rely on insect pollinators to enhance crop yield and other insect as natural enemies of pests. In order to target pesticides to pests only, farmers must know exactly where and when pests and beneficial insects are present in the field. A promising solution to this problem could be optical sensors combined with machine learning. We obtained around 10,000 records of flying insects found in oilseed rape (Brassica napus) crops, using an optical remote sensor and evaluated three different classification methods for the obtained signals, reaching over 80% accuracy. We demonstrate that it is possible to classify insects in flight, making it possible to optimize the application of insecticides in space and time. This will enable a technological leap in precision agriculture, where focus on prudent and environmentally-sensitive use of pesticides is a top priority.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 2203
Author(s):  
Antal Hiba ◽  
Attila Gáti ◽  
Augustin Manecy

Precise navigation is often performed by sensor fusion of different sensors. Among these sensors, optical sensors use image features to obtain the position and attitude of the camera. Runway relative navigation during final approach is a special case where robust and continuous detection of the runway is required. This paper presents a robust threshold marker detection method for monocular cameras and introduces an on-board real-time implementation with flight test results. Results with narrow and wide field-of-view optics are compared. The image processing approach is also evaluated on image data captured by a different on-board system. The pure optical approach of this paper increases sensor redundancy because it does not require input from an inertial sensor as most of the robust runway detectors.


Agriculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 208
Author(s):  
Daniel Queirós da Silva ◽  
André Silva Aguiar ◽  
Filipe Neves dos Santos ◽  
Armando Jorge Sousa ◽  
Danilo Rabino ◽  
...  

Smart and precision agriculture concepts require that the farmer measures all relevant variables in a continuous way and processes this information in order to build better prescription maps and to predict crop yield. These maps feed machinery with variable rate technology to apply the correct amount of products in the right time and place, to improve farm profitability. One of the most relevant information to estimate the farm yield is the Leaf Area Index. Traditionally, this index can be obtained from manual measurements or from aerial imagery: the former is time consuming and the latter requires the use of drones or aerial services. This work presents an optical sensing-based hardware module that can be attached to existing autonomous or guided terrestrial vehicles. During the normal operation, the module collects periodic geo-referenced monocular images and laser data. With that data a suggested processing pipeline, based on open-source software and composed by Structure from Motion, Multi-View Stereo and point cloud registration stages, can extract Leaf Area Index and other crop-related features. Additionally, in this work, a benchmark of software tools is made. The hardware module and pipeline were validated considering real data acquired in two vineyards—Portugal and Italy. A dataset with sensory data collected by the module was made publicly available. Results demonstrated that: the system provides reliable and precise data on the surrounding environment and the pipeline is capable of computing volume and occupancy area from the acquired data.


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