학술논문

Automated Pruning of Polyculture Plants
Document Type
Conference
Source
2022 IEEE 18th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE) Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), 2022 IEEE 18th International Conference on. :242-249 Aug, 2022
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Robotics and Control Systems
Automation
Target tracking
Computer aided software engineering
Neural networks
Visual servoing
Hardware
Seeds (agriculture)
Language
ISSN
2161-8089
Abstract
Polyculture farming has environmental advantages but requires substantially more pruning than monoculture farming. We present novel hardware and algorithms for automated pruning. Using an overhead camera to collect data from a physical scale garden testbed, the autonomous system utilizes a learned Plant Phenotyping convolutional neural network and a Bounding Disk Tracking algorithm to evaluate the individual plant distribution and estimate the state of the garden each day. From this garden state, AlphaGardenSim [1] selects plants to autonomously prune. A trained neural network detects and targets specific prune points on the plant. Two custom-designed pruning tools, compatible with a FarmBot [2] gantry system, are experimentally evaluated and execute autonomous cuts through controlled algorithms. We present results for four 60-day garden cycles. Results suggest the system can autonomously achieve 0.94 normalized plant diversity with pruning shears while maintaining an average canopy coverage of 0.84 by the end of the cycles. For code, videos, and datasets, see this url.