Measurement of Soil Tillage Using UAV High-Resolution 3D Data

Abstract

Remote sensing methodologies could contribute to a more sustainable agriculture, such as monitoring soil preparation for cultivation, which should be done properly, according to the topographic characteristics and the crop’s nature. The objectives of this work are to (1) demonstrate the potential of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology in the acquisition of 3D data before and after soil tillage, for the quantification of mobilised soil volume; (2) propose a methodology that enables the co-registration of multi-temporal DTMs that were obtained from UAV surveys; and (3) show the relevance of quality control and positional accuracy assessment in processing and results. An unchanged-area-matching method based on multiple linear regression analysis was implemented to reduce the deviation between the Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) to calculate a more reliable mobilised soil volume. The production of DTMs followed the usual photogrammetric-based Structure from Motion (SfM) workflow; the extraction of fill and cut areas was made through raster spatial modelling and statistical tools to support the analysis. Results highlight that the quality of the differential DTM should be ensured for a reliable estimation of areas and mobilised soil volume. This study is a contribution to the use of multi-temporal DTMs produced from different UAV surveys. Furthermore, it demonstrates the potential of UAV data in the understanding of soil variability within precision agriculture.

A Review on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Remote Sensing: Platforms, Sensors, Data Processing Methods, and Applications

“…It is worth noting that the authors used a small fixed-wing UAV as their remote sensing platform. Rebelo et al [77] proposed a method to generate a DTM by taking RGB images from multi-rotor UAVs. The authors used an RGB sensor carried by a DJI Phantom 4 UAV to take images within an area of 55 hectares (5.5 × 10 5 m 2 ) and established a 3D point cloud DTM through the SfM-MVS method.…”

Role of 5G Technology in Enhancing Agricultural Mechanization

“…Selective action on farms with autonomous vehicles can be possible through efficient positioning system favoured by 5G technology. For a better soil conservation, studying the tillage practices [23] like quantification of mobilized volume of soil [24], growth patterns study between different tillage methods using vegetation indices [25] are important and they can be done with UAV acquired 3D images. This image acquisition and processing can be made effective with leveraging 5G technology for UAV data acquisition.…”