Application of unmanned aerial systems for high throughput phenotyping of large wheat breeding nurseries

Citation: Haghighattalab, A., Perez, L. G., Mondal, S., Singh, D., Schinstock, D., Rutkoski, J., . . . Poland, J. (2016). Application of unmanned aerial systems for high throughput phenotyping of large wheat breeding nurseries. Plant Methods, 12, 15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13007-016-0134-6Background: Low cost unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have great potential for rapid proximal measurements of plants in agriculture. In the context of plant breeding and genetics, current approaches for phenotyping a large number of breeding lines under field conditions require substantial investments in time, cost, and labor. For field-based high-throughput phenotyping (HTP), UAS platforms can provide high-resolution measurements for small plot research, while enabling the rapid assessment of tens-of-thousands of field plots. The objective of this study was to complete a baseline assessment of the utility of UAS in assessment field trials as commonly implemented in wheat breeding programs. We developed a semi-automated image-processing pipeline to extract plot level data from UAS imagery. The image dataset was processed using a photogrammetric pipeline based on image orientation and radiometric calibration to produce orthomosaic images. We also examined the relationships between vegetation indices (VIs) extracted from high spatial resolution multispectral imagery collected with two different UAS systems (eBee Ag carrying MultiSpec 4C camera, and IRIS+ quadcopter carrying modified NIR Canon S100) and ground truth spectral data from hand-held spectroradiometer. Results: We found good correlation between the VIs obtained from UAS platforms and ground-truth measurements and observed high broad-sense heritability for VIs. We determined radiometric calibration methods developed for satellite imagery significantly improved the precision of VIs from the UAS. We observed VIs extracted from calibrated images of Canon S100 had a significantly higher correlation to the spectroradiometer (r = 0.76) than VIs from the MultiSpec 4C camera (r = 0.64). Their correlation to spectroradiometer readings was as high as or higher than repeated measurements with the spectroradiometer per se. Conclusion: The approaches described here for UAS imaging and extraction of proximal sensing data enable collection of HTP measurements on the scale and with the precision needed for powerful selection tools in plant breeding. Low-cost UAS platforms have great potential for use as a selection tool in plant breeding programs. In the scope of tools development, the pipeline developed in this study can be effectively employed for other UAS and also other crops planted in breeding nurseries

Intensity based image registration of satellite images using evolutionary techniques

Image registration is the fundamental image processing technique to determine geometrical transformation that gives the most accurate match between reference and floating images. Its main aim is to align two images. Satellite images to be fused for numerous applications must be registered before use. The main challenges in satellite image registration are finding out the optimum transformation parameters. Here in this work the non-alignment parameters are considered to be rigid and affine transformation. An intensity based satellite image registration technique is being used to register the floating image to the native co-ordinate system where the normalized mutual information (NMI) is taken as the similarity metric for optimizing and updating transform parameters. Because of no assumptions are made regarding the nature of the relationship between the image intensities in both modalities NMI is very general and powerful and can be applied automatically without prior segmentation on a large variety of data and as well works better for overlapped images as compared to mutual information(MI). In order to get maximum accuracy of registration the NMI is optimized using Genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization and hybrid GA-PSO. The random initialization and computational complexity makes GA oppressive, whereas weak local search ability with a premature convergence is the main drawback of PSO. Hybrid GA-PSO makes a trade-off between the local and global search in order to achieve a better balance between convergence speed and computational complexity. The above registration algorithm is being validated with several satellite data sets. The hybrid GA-PSO outperforms in terms of optimized NMI value and percentage of mis-registration error

SIFT-FANN: An efficient framework for spatio-spectral fusion of satellite images

Image fusion techniques are widely used for remote sensing data. A special application is for using low resolution multi-spectral image with high resolution panchromatic image to obtain an image having both spectral and spatial information. Alignment of images to be fused is a step prior to image fusion. This is achieved by registering the images. This paper proposes the methods involving Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbor (FANN) for automatic registration of satellite image (reference image) prior to fusion of low spatial resolution multi-spectral QuickBird satellite image (sensed image) with high spatial resolution panchromatic QuickBird satellite image. In the registration steps, Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract key points from both images. The keypoints are then matched using the automatic tuning algorithm, namely, FANN. This algorithm automatically selects the most appropriate indexing algorithm for the dataset. The indexed features are then matched using approximate nearest neighbor. Further, Random Sample Consensus (RanSAC) is used for further filtering to obtain only the inliers and co-register the images. The images are then fused using Intensity Hue Saturation (IHS) transform based technique to obtain a high spatial resolution multi-spectral image. The results show that the quality of fused images obtained using this algorithm is computationally efficient

Robust Modular Feature-Based Terrain-Aided Visual Navigation and Mapping

The visual feature-based Terrain-Aided Navigation (TAN) system presented in this thesis addresses the problem of constraining inertial drift introduced into the location estimate of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in GPS-denied environment. The presented TAN system utilises salient visual features representing semantic or human-interpretable objects (roads, forest and water boundaries) from onboard aerial imagery and associates them to a database of reference features created a-priori, through application of the same feature detection algorithms to satellite imagery. Correlation of the detected features with the reference features via a series of the robust data association steps allows a localisation solution to be achieved with a finite absolute bound precision defined by the certainty of the reference dataset. The feature-based Visual Navigation System (VNS) presented in this thesis was originally developed for a navigation application using simulated multi-year satellite image datasets. The extension of the system application into the mapping domain, in turn, has been based on the real (not simulated) flight data and imagery. In the mapping study the full potential of the system, being a versatile tool for enhancing the accuracy of the information derived from the aerial imagery has been demonstrated. Not only have the visual features, such as road networks, shorelines and water bodies, been used to obtain a position ’fix’, they have also been used in reverse for accurate mapping of vehicles detected on the roads into an inertial space with improved precision. Combined correction of the geo-coding errors and improved aircraft localisation formed a robust solution to the defense mapping application. A system of the proposed design will provide a complete independent navigation solution to an autonomous UAV and additionally give it object tracking capability

Extraction of low cost houses from a high spatial resolution satellite imagery using Canny edge detection filter

Since its democratic dispensation in 1994, the South African government enacted a number of legislative and policy interventions aimed at availing equal housing opportunities to the previously marginalized citizens. Mismanagement and unreliable reporting has been widely reported in publicly funded housing programmes which necessitated the government to audit and monitor housing development projects in municipalities using more robust and independent methodologies. The objective of this study was therefore to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of high spatial resolution satellite imagery in validating the presence of government funded houses using an object-oriented classification technique that applies a Canny edge detection filter. The results of this study demonstrate that object-orientated classification applied on pan-sharpened SPOT 6 satellite imagery can be used to conduct a reliable inventory and validate the number of houses. The application of the multi-resolution segmentation and Canny edge detection filtering technique proved to be an effective means of mapping individual houses as shown by the high detection accuracy of 99% and quality percentage of 96%.Keywords: Houses, Remote Sensing, SPOT 6, Canny edge detection, Multi-resolution Segmentation, Object-Oriented Classificatio