2024-03-28T21:20:30Zhttp://doidb.wdc-terra.org/oaip/oaioai:doidb.wdc-terra.org:51332014-04-24T15:27:12ZDOIDBDOIDB.TR32DB
10.5880/TR32DB.KGA94.10
Neeland, Heiko
Kraft, Martin
Construction and Measurement Technology of the ThünoCopter for Contactless Inspection of Crop Canopies: First Measurements with a Low-Cost Image Analyzing System
Geographisches Institut der Universität zu Köln - Kölner Geographische Arbeiten
2014
UAV
Crop/s
Agriculture
Vegetation
Airborne Measurements
550 Earth sciences
Bendig, Juliane
Bareth, Georg
CRC/TR32 Database (TR32DB)
University of Cologne, Regional Computing Centre (RRZK)
2014-04-14
eng
Workshop paper
7 Pages
1159 Kilobytes
application/pdf
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
This work is about the mechanical construction and the measurement system of the ThuenoCopter. Both, the mechanical construction and the measurement system (sensors, 32 bit microcontroller board and image analyzing system) of the ThuenoCopter will be presented and first measurements of the low-cost image analyzing system will be shown. Climate changes and limited natural resources are the challenges for agriculture in a world where the population is still increasing and farm land may be decreasing for the next 50 years. On the one hand plant breeders need tools to measure many parameters like crop cover, crop temperature, etc. which are important for an optimal growth of plants. On the other hand improved conservative production methods for a sustainable agriculture can only be developed and tested practically if these parameters can be measured reliably and the relationship between these parameters and the plant growth is well known. The composition of the soil, the climate conditions, the supply with water and fertilizer and the use of plant protection chemicals determine the growth of every crop during its vegetation period. In order to have a UAV-based method for contactless crop inspection during the vegetation period - from tillage to harvesting - the ThuenoCopter has been developed on the base of an Oktokopter by Mikrokopter. The ThuenoCopter has a height of approx. 50 cm and its diameter is approx. 1 m. While flying along predefined routes, the measurement system of the ThuenoCopter measures the crop temperature, the air humidity and temperature, the global radiation, and it takes photos which are processed onboard in near real-time with the aim of detecting rows and weeds. The ThuenoCopter has been developed and optimized in weight and robustness (mechanical and electrical construction). A low-cost image analyzing system has been brought into operation. First measurements will be shown and discussed. Afterwards an outlook for improvements and further research activities is given.