Oil Palm Health Estimation Using Low Altitude Remote Sensing

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), or drones are small autonomous airplane that does not need a pilot on board (CAR, 2016). UAS is increasingly becoming widely known for its capability to bring many innovations to the world. UAVs are also utilized as geospatial technology tools, providing benefits to environmental monitoring. Therefore, this study aims to estimate oil palm health using UAV payload remote sensing compact sensors. Two remote sensing compact sensors were used in this study which is visible (RGB) and Near Infrared (NIR) to get the reflectance curve of the oil palm. Analysing oil palm condition from reflectance curve by using a spectroradiometer are the first objective while analysing extraction oil palm condition by using sensors is the second objective. Some policy and regulation were involved to follow the guideline that has been implemented by the agency. Instead of using a UAV, the spectroradiometer was used to visualize the spectral response curve of an oil palm. As a result, the oil palm condition at study area is in healthy condition where the reflectance curve for multispectral compact sensors (0.84) and spectrometer (0.82) which are above healthy indicator (0.5) whereby favourable to determine the growth stability of oil palm trees. As a summary, these techniques are potential to support the development of modernization technology in environmental monitoring for oil palm plantations and give an alternative way to give good result on oil palm health condition.