Development of a low-cost and flexible UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) based decision support system for sustainable land use management
The project is embedded in the frame of integrating precision technologies into agricultural land use management systems (Precision Farming). Precision Farming is an information based technology with main emphasis on integrating site specific applications into classical farming systems.
The goal of this project is the development of an autonomous navigating low cost UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) to gather multitemporal and multispectral airphotos of agricultural fields. The basic remote sensing platform capturing airphotos is an Octocopter (commercial construction kit from the company Microcopter). The information from the airphotos are integrated in flexible decision support systems with robust algorithms in order to further developing Precision Farming strategies on farms like for example optimizing variable rate nitrogen fertilisation which is related to certain development stages of the field crops (narrow time window). The decision support system in this project integrates the following four main components:
1. Remote sensing system: development of an unmanned autonomic navigating Octocopter including for example way point programming, GPS, image sensors, autonomic starting and landing procedures on defined points.
2. Image processing: mosaicking as well as geo- and radiometric image corrections adapted to meet the specific requirements in this project.
3. Development of algorithm and models: by the example of variable rate nitrogen fertilisation, algorithm and models are developed including for example soft multi data fusion techniques based on the evidence theory by Dempster-Shafer.
4. Web-based work flow management: administration and development of web-based work flows by standardised data exchange. The use case is the variable rate nitrogen fertilisation.
The practicability of the System will be tested on two farms in Brandenburg and Thüringen with different soil and climatic conditions.
Kaufmann, Otto Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. (Details) (Livestock Industries and Techniques in Animal Handling)
Financer
Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt
Duration of project
Start date: 12/2009
End date: 04/2013
