07 - Systems, Subsystems and Equipment
A NOVEL BISTATIC LIDAR SYSTEM FOR EARLY-DETECTION OF PLANT DISEASES FROM UNMANNED AIRCRAFT
H. Pham¹, Y. Lim¹, A. Gardi¹, R. Sabatini¹, E. Pang¹; ¹RMIT University, Australia
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), also known as drones, are capable of autonomously carrying out an increasing number of duties with substantially greater efficiency compared to human intervention. UAS researchers aim to enhance the levels of safety, navigation performance and autonomy, as well as explore additional mission capabilities. Crop health monitoring, in particular, is a very promising application of UAS as the early detection of diseases can supplement traditional crop monitoring techniques (such as visual observation) to support timely mitigation, thereby offering substantial benefits to crop yield. This paper presents new UAS-borne EO/IR systems based on bistatic Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) for early detection of crop diseases. The proposed bistatic LIDAR system measures over extended observation above the crop canopy periods anomalies in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration potentially associated with disruptions in the plant photosynthesis. In particular, this paper discusses the application of the bistatic LIDAR to the early detection of powdery mildew in strawberry crops and presents the initial modelling and simulation activities performed to predict the sensor performance. Based on the results of this analysis, a plan for future experimental activities is also developed.