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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Stoneville, Mississippi » Crop Production Systems Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #319592
Title: Unmanned aerial vehicle: A unique platform for low-altitude remote sensing for crop management

Author
item Huang, Yanbo
item Reddy, Krishna

Submitted to: Meeting Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/31/2015
Publication Date: 10/13/2015
Citation: Huang, Y., Reddy, K.N. 2015. Unmanned aerial vehicle: A unique platform for low-altitude remote sensing for crop management. Proceedings of the Plenary and Lead Papers of the 25th Asian-Pacific Weed Science Society Conference. Volume 1:185-192.

Interpretive Summary: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is a unique platform for remotely sensing crop fields that complements remote crop sensing from other platforms such as satellite, aircraft and ground-based platforms. Scientists in USDA ARS Crop Production Systems Research Unit in Stoneville, Mississippi developed and applied UAV-based systems for characterization of crop herbicide injury, crop yield estimation and crop field monitoring at multiple altitudes. Results indicate that UAV-based remote sensing not only inherits the state-of-the-art of remote sensing science and technology but also adds value to precision crop management and spray drift assessment.

Technical Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) provide a unique platform for remote sensing to monitor crop fields that complements remote sensing from satellite, aircraft and ground-based platforms. The UAV-based remote sensing is versatile at ultra-low altitude to be able to provide an ultra-high-resolution image of crop fields to analyze the crop growth with two-dimensional visualization and three-dimensional reconstruction of the surface features of the crop fields. Also, UAV-based remote sensing is well controllable and adjustable to conduct multi-scale crop field monitoring for improved single-scale monitoring. This paper presents the UAV imaging systems we developed and used for characterization of crop herbicide injury, crop yield estimation and multi-scale crop field monitoring. Results illustrate that UAV-based remote sensing inherits the state-of-the-art of remote sensing science and technology and adds value to precision crop management and spray drift assessment.