Crop Monitoring
Challenges and how they will be addressed
Current field scouting practices for plant health, disease and weed detection are time consuming and labour intensive. Despite the potential of drones there is limited knowledge on how drones and remote sensing technologies can optimise crop yield and quality, which currently relies heavily on Plant Protection Products (PPPs).
The UC will explore the capability of single and multi-use drones for performing a series of complex crpo monitoring tasks and develop a robust protocol for image analysis and modelling.
This UC will also interact with the Drone Spraying UC conducted in Greece, to investigate spot-specific spraying applications, based on 3D canopy characteristics (canopy structure, coverage and density).
Objectives
1. Demonstrate
Demonstrate the capacity of drones for disease identification and weed detection in vineyards
2. Assess
Assess drones as tools for 3D canopy reconstruction in vineyards, by using aerial and ground image acquisition
3. Develop
Develop a user-friendly dashboard as a decision support system for drone data analysis, visualisation and action recommendations
Tech components and data
- Multirotor drone
- Thermal camera – thermal imagery
- RGB camera – RGB imagery
- Hyperspectral camera – hyperspectral imagery (for specific disease detection)
- Lidar sensor – point cloud data
- IoT weather station – environmental and soil data.
Expected outcomes
01
Support
Combined analysis of thermal, RGB and hyperspectral data for disease identification and weed detection.
02
Research
Development of 3D monitoring protocol for drones’ movement within vineyards.
03
Confidence
Map creation model for spot-specific spaying of 3D crops
04
Confidence
Dashboard with: repository for drone captured data, a visualisation tool and a decision-support tool for optimum spot-specific spraying.