Abstract
Transferring sensing and monitoring technologies from applied research to practical applications is an important aspect of innovative precision agriculture. Until now several attempts can be found in context of automatic crop monitoring and proximal sensing. Various problems arise when adapting these solutions to real environments conditions, for instance to uneven and steep terrains in apple orchards and vineyards present in alpine regions such as South Tyrol (IT). Measurement data is influenced by shocks, vibrations and geometrical misalignments transmitted from the carrier vehicle or terrain, and can be improved with either Software or Hardware methods. ByeLab is a mobile laboratory, designed to carry out automatic crop monitoring tasks by applying techniques of ground sensing. It consists of an electric driven bins carrier and a support system for several installed sensors: 6 OptRx, 2 LiDAR, 1 RTK-GNSS. This paper presents an extension of this system with AgROSense, a sensor platform in 46 combination with a real-time height compensation mechanism for sensors. The feedback for the control algorithms is composed by an AHRS measuring angles and a laser-sensor used to gather the height reference from the moving sleigh of the mechanism to the ground. In order to overcome disturbances, the support system of the vehicle dampens high frequency vibrations whereas the mechanism evens out low frequency movements with high amplitudes. A controlled environment was used to validate the system whereas the uneven terrain was simulated using well-defined obstacles. The validation was carried out comparing LiDAR scans obtained by the system, with and without AgROSense, and the scans collected by a terrestrial laser scanner as a reference. First experimental results have shown the capability of the system to carry out more precise measurements than compared with those made without real-time compensation. Further investigations and real environment experiments are planned in future work.