Development of a UAV system for VNIR-TIR acquisitions in precision agriculture

摘要: Adoption of precision agriculture techniques requires the development specialized tools that provide spatially distributed information. Both flying platforms and airborne sensors are being continuously evolved to cover needs plant soil sensing at affordable costs. Due restrictions in payload, usually limited carry a single sensor on board. The aim this work is present vertical take-off landing autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (VTOL UAV) system for simultaneous acquisition high resolution images visible, near infrared (VNIR) thermal (TIR) wavelengths. A was developed has ability trigger two cameras simultaneously with fully automated process no pilot intervention. commercial hexacopter UAV platform optimized increase reliability, ease operation automation. designed systems communication based reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor running Linux OS custom drivers an efficient way, while keeping cost weight minimum. Special software also image capture, data processing board metadata storage. tested over kiwifruit field northern Greece, heights 70 100m above ground. acquired were mosaicked geo-corrected. Images from both good quality revealed unprecedented detail within field. normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) calculated along order information accurate location stressors other parameters related crop productivity. Compared available sources data, can low cost, easily repeatable requirements agriculture.