Abstract
To protect crops from diseases and increase yields, chemical agents are applied by boom sprayers. To achieve the optimal effect, the boom and the crop canopy should be kept at an appropriate distance. So, it is crucial to be able to distinguish the crop canopy from other plant leaves. Based on ultrasonic ranging, this paper adopts the fuzzy iterative self-organizing data analysis technique algorithm to identify the canopy location. According to the structural characteristics of the crop canopy, based on fuzzy clustering, the algorithm can dynamically adjust the number and center of clusters so as to get the optimal results. Therefore, the distances from the sensor to the canopy or the ground can be accurately acquired, and the influence of lower leaves on the measurement results can be alleviated. Potted corn plants from the 3-leaf stage to the 6-leaf stage were tested on an experiment bench. The results showed that the calculated distances from the sensor to the canopy using this method had good correlation with the manually measured distances. The maximum error of calculated values appeared at the 3-leaf stage. With the growth of plants, the error of calculated values decreased. The increased sensor moving speeds led to increased error due to the reduced data points. From the 3-leaf stage to the 5-leaf stage, the distances from the sensor to the ground can also be obtained at the same time. The method proposed in this paper provides a practical resolution to localize the canopy for adjusting the height of sprayer boom.
Highlights
Nowadays, boom sprayers have been commonly used for the application of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in agriculture
The performance of the boom height control system is partially dependent on the accuracy of the plant height measurement [4]
Ultrasonic sensors for the determination of plant heights have been used for weed detection
Summary
Boom sprayers have been commonly used for the application of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers in agriculture. In order to achieve a reasonably uniform application of such materials, it is necessary that the boom be maintained at a constant distance from the target area (crop canopy or ground). The performance of the boom height control system is partially dependent on the accuracy of the plant height measurement [4]. To control the boom height, ultrasonic sensors are mounted to the sprayer boom for measuring the distance of the boom either from the canopy or the ground [5,6,7,8]. Ultrasonic sensors for the determination of plant heights have been used for weed detection. Thomas et al [10] concluded that
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