Determining Plant Count, Location, and Spacing Using Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Sensor Hardware Combined with Advanced Data Analysis and Visualization Tools.

Plant count, location, and intra-row spacing information for major fields crops [e.g., maize (Zea mays L.), sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench)] is useful to crop researchers, planting equipment manufacturers, farm consultants, crop input sales representative, insurance agents, and growers. Such information provides insights into field and research plot quality, agronomic explanations for observed crop responses, feedback on field equipment performance, and data inputs for crop input prescriptions. A large number of public- and private-sector groups are engaged in the collection of plant stand count and intra-row spacing data using traditional methods (e.g., direct counting and measurement of plants using field work crews). These techniques are often laborious, slow, costly, and error-prone and provide little to no geospatial plant location information. Due to these constraints, others simply refrain from collecting this information despite its multiple uses. Building upon our 2016 presentation in this session, our inter-disciplinary research team will provide an update on the technology and techniques it has developed to determine stand count, plant location, and intra-row spacing information using commercially-available, properly-operated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); relatively low-cost, high-quality RGB sensors; and multiple, advanced image processing and visualization techniques. Costs, throughput, multi-crop capabilities, and research and commercial agricultural applications will also be discussed.