Two-stage procedure based on smoothed ensembles of neural networks applied to weed detection in orange groves

The potential impacts of herbicide utilization compel producers to use new methods of weed control. The problem of how to reduce the amount of herbicide and yet maintain crop production has stimulated many researchers to study selective herbicide application. The key of selective herbicide application is how to discriminate the weed areas efficiently. We introduce a procedure for weed detection in orange groves which consists of two different stages. In the first stage, the main features in an image of the grove are determined (Trees, Trunks, Soil and Sky). In the second, the weeds are detected only in those areas which were determined as Soil in the first stage. Due to the characteristics of weed detection (changing weather and light conditions), we introduce a new training procedure with noisy patterns for ensembles of neural networks. In the experiments, a comparison of the new noisy learning was successfully performed with a set of well-known classification problems from the machine learning repository published by the University of California, Irvine. This first comparison was performed to determine the general behavior and performance of the noisy ensembles. Then, the new noisy ensembles were applied to images from orange groves to determine where weeds are located using the proposed two-stage procedure. Main results of this contribution show that the proposed system is suitable for weed detection in orange, and similar, groves

Combining Satellite Images and Cadastral Information for Outdoor Autonomous Mapping and Navigation: A Proof-of-Concept Study in Citric Groves

The development of robotic applications for agricultural environments has several problems which are not present in the robotic systems used for indoor environments. Some of these problems can be solved with an efficient navigation system. In this paper, a new system is introduced to improve the navigation tasks for those robots which operate in agricultural environments. Concretely, the paper focuses on the problem related to the autonomous mapping of agricultural parcels (i.e., an orange grove). The map created by the system will be used to help the robots navigate into the parcel to perform maintenance tasks such as weed removal, harvest, or pest inspection. The proposed system connects to a satellite positioning service to obtain the real coordinates where the robotic system is placed. With these coordinates, the parcel information is downloaded from an online map service in order to autonomously obtain a map of the parcel in a readable format for the robot. Finally, path planning is performed by means of Fast Marching techniques using the robot or a team of two robots. This paper introduces the proof-of-concept and describes all the necessary steps and algorithms to obtain the path planning just from the initial coordinates of the robot

A new HLA-based distributed control architecture for agricultural teams of robots in hybrid applications with real and simulated devices or environments

The control architecture is one of the most important part of agricultural robotics and other robotic systems. Furthermore its importance increases when the system involves a group of heterogeneous robots that should cooperate to achieve a global goal. A new control architecture is introduced in this paper for groups of robots in charge of doing maintenance tasks in agricultural environments. Some important features such as scalability, code reuse, hardware abstraction and data distribution have been considered in the design of the new architecture. Furthermore, coordination and cooperation among the different elements in the system is allowed in the proposed control system. By integrating a network oriented device server Player, Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) and High Level Architecture (HLA), the previous concepts have been considered in the new architecture presented in this paper. HLA can be considered the most important part because it not only allows the data distribution and implicit communication among the parts of the system but also allows to simultaneously operate with simulated and real entities, thus allowing the use of hybrid systems in the development of applications