In row cultivation controlled by plant patterns

Abstract

Information about a regular crop seeding pattern is used to locate individual crop plants seeded with a precision seeder. The amount of vegetation along each of the crop rows are monitored using a bispectral line scanning camera, this generates a vegetation coverage signal. Convolution of the vegetation coverage signal with a damped harmonic oscillation, tuned to the crop plant spacing used in the field, gives a signal with distinct peaks near the real crop plant locations.The algorithm was tested on real field data, consisting of precision seeded maize. The seeding pattern were locked, such that a crop plant in one row will be next to a crop plant in the adjacent rows. The average absolution position error from the precision seeder is estimated to be around 15.5 mm.Compared to manual annotated ground truth plant positions, the system locates individual crop plants with an average absolute position error of 20.72 mm when using information from a single crop row and an average absolution position error of 14.79 mm when utilising information from five adjacent crop rows.