Designing a High-Throughput Ground Based Sensing System for Plant Evaluation.

High-throughput mobile sensing systems provide a mechanism for collecting large volumes of data in research and management venues. The many components and expansive data resources produced by such systems can present many challenges in data delivery and analysis. Sound design of the system components and a data flow strategy can assist in avoiding system failure and loss of data integrity. Durability and appropriate use of the vehicle for a specific venue, as well as robust and durable sensing components are important factors to consider in designing a system. The vehicles selected for use in the development of the system in this study consisted of a high wheel tractor for fine scale data collection and a gasoline powered golf cart for field scale data collection. The sensing equipment consisted of two time of flight laser distance sensors, a 240 MHz ultrasonic sensor, a Holland scientific ACS430, ACS470, and DAS43 as well as a Greenseeker radiometer. Spatial data was generated by an OMNI-star enable GPS system for data identification. An RFID system was also deployed as part of the system in order to enable identification of individual plants using RFID tags similar to greenhouse stakes. A custom software application (AgriLogger) was created to collect data from all devices simultaneously and log the data to a single text file. Further development of the data flow strategy components is necessary in order to streamline the processing of data and the information delivery to the end user.