Development of position monitoring system for multi-spectral image acquisition of crop canopy

Abstract. In order to monitor the crop growth status in the field non-destructively, a multi-spectral image acquisition device was installed on the vehicle. When the vehicle moves, it is needed to monitor the sampling position and control the camera. Thus, the position monitoring and camera control system was developed to acquire the sampling position and trigger the camera. The software was developed based on VC++ in the environment of Windows with three basic capabilities including GPS data collection and storage, map drawing, and data management:(1) The GPS data collection and storage is used to provide the location where the vehicle or the camera is working; (2) The map drawing function is used to set and draw the plot boundary and camera location points. If the camera is located in the setting boundary, the control signal will be send to open the multi-spectral camera to capture the image of crop canopy; (3) The data management function helps to display, query and modify the data of GPS and the system setting parameter. The GPS data could be read from the serial port after parameters set correctly. The longitude and latitude of four boundary points were used to draw the plot boundary map. When the camera was located in the setting region, the multi-spectral camera was opened and the sampling position could be tracked. The application experiment was conducted to prove the system function. It could help to measure data efficiently in the field.