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Sensing in the visible spectrum and beyond for terrain estimation in precision agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2017

A. Milella ,
M. Nielsen  and
G. Reina
A. Milella*
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation, National Research Council, Bari, Italy
M. Nielsen
Affiliation:
Danish Technological Institute, Odense, Denmark
G. Reina
Affiliation:
University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
*
†E-mail: milella@ba.issia.cnr.it
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Abstract

A multi-sensor approach for terrain estimation is proposed using a combination of complementary optical sensors that cover the visible (VIS), near infrared (NIR) and infrared (IR) spectrum. The sensor suite includes a stereovision sensor, a VIS-NIR camera and a thermal camera, and it is intended to be mounted on board an agricultural vehicle, pointing downward to scan the portion of the terrain ahead. A method to integrate the different sensor data and create a multi-modal dense 3D terrain map is presented. The stereovision input is used to generate 3D point clouds that incorporate RGB-D information, whereas the VIS-NIR camera and the thermal sensor are employed to extract respectively spectral signatures and temperature information, to characterize the nature of the observed surfaces. Experimental tests carried out by an off-road vehicle are presented, showing the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Keywords

Autonomous intelligent vehiclesagricultural roboticsterrain estimationoptical sensorssensing in the visible and beyond
Type
Soil Sensing and Variability
Information
Advances in Animal Biosciences , Volume 8 , Special Issue 2: Papers presented at the 11th European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA 2017), John McIntyre Centre, Edinburgh, UK, July 16–20 2017 , July 2017 , pp. 423 - 429
Copyright
© The Animal Consortium 2017 

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