Quantifyng Efficacy and Limits of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Technology for Weed Seedling Detection as Affected by Sensor Resolution

In order to optimize the application of herbicides in weed-crop systems, accurate and timely weed maps of the crop-field are required. In this context, this investigation quantified the efficacy and limitations of remote images collected with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for early detection of w...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Peña Barragán, José Manuel, Torres-Sánchez, Jorge, Serrano Pérez, Angélica, Castro, Ana Isabel de, López Granados, Francisca
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/123407
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/123407
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Visible-light and multispectral cameras
Weed mapping
Site-specific weed management
Remote sensing
Object-based image analysis
Descrição
Resumo:In order to optimize the application of herbicides in weed-crop systems, accurate and timely weed maps of the crop-field are required. In this context, this investigation quantified the efficacy and limitations of remote images collected with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for early detection of weeds seedlings. The ability to discriminate weeds was significantly affected by the imagery spectral (type of camera), spatial (flight altitude) and temporal (the date of the study) resolutions. The colour-infrared images captured at 40 m and 50 days after sowing (date 2), when plants had 5-6 true leaves, had the highest weed detection accuracy (up to 91%). At this flight altitude, the images captured before date 2 had slightly better results than the images captured later. However, this trend changed in the visible-light images capture at 60 m and higher, which had notably better results on date (57 days after sowing) because of the larger size of the weed plants. Our results showed the requirements on spectral and spatial resolutions needed to generate a suitable weed map early in the growing season, as well as the best moment for the UAV image acquisition, with the ultimate objective of applying site-specific weed management operations.