Automatic imaging system mounted on boom sprayer for crop scouting using an off-the-shelf RGB camera

Abstract

This article describes an imaging system mounted on the boom of a self-propelled sprayer, which was developed to automatically capture and store high-definition video images, while handling agrochemical spray and machine vibration. This was accomplished using an off-the-shelf camera (DSC-RX0M2, Sony) and two single board computers. To enable automatic operation, the system was designed to start and terminate along with the engine. All components were powered successfully except for the camera which runs only on its own battery. This was overcome by delaying powering certain hardware and software components of the system for different periods to allow consistent initialization of the entire system. Accordingly, the current version of the system starts imaging 15 min after engine start-up and guarantees performance for 3 h of consecutive video capturing. After several field trials, the imaging system became able to save images with the required quality. The developed software is able to handle images at a rate of 30 frames per second without delay. In order to handle dynamic light conditions, the camera shooting mode was set to manual at a very high shutter speed. This provided detailed images at both sunny and cloudy conditions. While the current captured images proved to be adequate to start machine vision system development, there is a setback when trying to get images at early morning or evening as they tend to be too dark. This will be handled while upgrading the system towards a machine vision for the purpose of automatic scouting.