Hyperspectral reflectance signatures and point clouds for precision agriculture by light weight UAV imaging system

The objective of this investigation was to study the use of a new type of a low-weight unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imaging system in the precision agriculture. The system consists of a novel Fabry-Perot interferometer based hyperspectral camera and a high-resolution small-format consumer camera. The sensors provide stereoscopic imagery in a 2D frame-format and they both weigh less than 500 g. A processing chain was developed for the production of high density point clouds and hyperspectral reflectance image mosaics (reflectance signatures), which are used as inputs in the agricultural application. We demonstrate the use of this new technology in the biomass estimation process, which is based on support vector regression machine. It was concluded that the central factors influencing on the accuracy of the estimation process were the quality of the image data, the quality of the image processing and digital surface model generation, and the performance of the regressor. In the wider perspective, our investigation showed that very low-weight, low-cost, hyperspectral, stereoscopic and spectrodirectional 3D UAV-remote sensing is now possible. This cutting edge technology is powerful and cost efficient in time-critical, repetitive and locally operated remote sensing applications

Hyperspectral reflectance signatures and point clouds for precision agriculture by light weight UAV imaging system

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UAV-BASED PHOTOGRAMMETRIC POINT CLOUDS AND HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING FOR MAPPING BIODIVERSITY INDICATORS IN BOREAL FORESTS

Biodiversity is commonly referred to as species diversity but in forest ecosystems variability in structural and functional characteristics can also be treated as measures of biodiversity. Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide a means for characterizing forest ecosystem with high spatial resolution, permitting measuring physical characteristics of a forest ecosystem from a viewpoint of biodiversity. The objective of this study is to examine the applicability of photogrammetric point clouds and hyperspectral imaging acquired with a small UAV helicopter in mapping biodiversity indicators, such as structural complexity as well as the amount of deciduous and dead trees at plot level in southern boreal forests. Standard deviation of tree heights within a sample plot, used as a proxy for structural complexity, was the most accurately derived biodiversity indicator resulting in a mean error of 0.5 m, with a standard deviation of 0.9 m. The volume predictions for deciduous and dead trees were underestimated by 32.4 m3/ha and 1.7 m3/ha, respectively, with standard deviation of 50.2 m3/ha for deciduous and 3.2 m3/ha for dead trees. The spectral features describing brightness (i.e. higher reflectance values) were prevailing in feature selection but several wavelengths were represented. Thus, it can be concluded that structural complexity can be predicted reliably but at the same time can be expected to be underestimated with photogrammetric point clouds obtained with a small UAV. Additionally, plot-level volume of dead trees can be predicted with small mean error whereas identifying deciduous species was more challenging at plot level