Development of UAV-based lidar crop height mapping system

Zhu, Huangjian

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99224 Copy

Description

Title

Development of UAV-based lidar crop height mapping system

Author(s)

Zhu, Huangjian

Issue Date

2017-12-04

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Tian, Lei

Department of Study

Engineering Administration

Discipline

Agricultural & Biological Engr

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Unmanned aerial vehicle
• Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)
• Remote sensing
• Point cloud
• Crop height

Abstract

Crop height monitoring is important to appropriate field management. Previous studies have indicated that a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor was capable of accurate and fast data collection. As technology of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) advanced, the airborne LiDAR system became a promising remote sensing based method for non-destructive crop height measurement. The objective of this study was to develop a UAV-based LiDAR system for crop height measurement. The system consisted of a 360-degree 2D laser scanner and an onboard computer mounted on an open source UAV platform. A data processing and visualization algorithm was developed to process dense spatial point cloud data and generate a crop height map of the target field. Outdoor experiments were conducted in a real corn field to evaluate the height measurement performance of the UAV-based LiDAR system. The results show that the average R2 value of 0.87, average mean error (absolute error) of 4.47% and average RMSE of 0.143 m, were achieved in comparison with manual measurements. The UAV-based LiDAR system could cover a 2 acre corn field within eight and half minutes, saving about 90% operation time compared with a tractor-based LiDAR system. The UAV-based LiDAR system developed in this study demonstrated its accurate and efficient crop height measurement in a real crop field, and is expected to be applied in practical agricultural production.

Graduation Semester

2017-12

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99224

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2017 Huangjian Zhu

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