About the project
Funding
The project runs in the period 2003--2006 as a part
of the National Research programme "Sustainable Technology in
Agriculture" ("Bæredygtig teknologi i Jordbruget"),
supported by the Danish Technical Research Council, the Danish
Agricultural and Veterinary Research Council and the Danish Ministry
of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries.
Vision
The general vision is effective precision farming,
which in harmony with the environment utilises resources
optimally. This requires continuous selective and adaptive control of
growth, weeds, diseases and pest. In turn such control is conditioned
on corresponding continuous monitoring in the field using appropriate
methods of measuring the current conditions of and for the plant
growth.
The objective of this project is to develop methods of
measuring and managing such information to support the above vision in
a way that invites also new innovative approaches to precision farming
by providing the necessary information on demand and in time for
planning and decision making.
More concretely the project will develop methods and technology for:
- Computer vision methods for on-site and real-time
monitoring of information of the crop growth (nutrients, diseases,
etc.). The methods will allow diagnostics of crop condition based on
reflection patterns (e.g. mis-coloured areas) down to single leaf
scale.
- Implementation and integration of the above methods
on an autonomous platform with a suite of existing crop and soil
measuring facilities for on-site operation
- Repeated test
and evaluation for development and Proof of concept:
"Autonomous Crop and Soil Surveillance".
Hence the project through new research and practical
development will contribute to a new scope precision agriculture,
which until now has not been seen in its full perspectives, due to the
lack of precise and timely information
Organisation
The project is divided into three part projects
with the following titles and main objectives:
- Computer vision analysis of biological semi transparent colour objects
- Development of computer vision methods for spatial and spectral
analysis of leaves.
- Analysis and description of 3D
structures of canopies in outdoor conditions.
- Outdoor computer vision for assessment of vegetation
- Detection of growth status of vegetation on basis of reflection
patterns of leaves and structure of canopies (i.e. nitrogen
deficiency, infestation by diseases etc.
- Discrimination
between various stress factors.
- Local versus global measurements for assessment of the canopy.
- System integration, field analysis and evaluation
- Integration of developed measurements methods onto an
autonomous platform.
- Test and evaluation of developed
methods.
Last modified: 8 July 2004 (Kristian Kirk)