Height Measurement of Basil Crops for Smart Irrigation Applications in Greenhouses using Commercial Sensors
Abstract
Plant height is a key phenotypic attribute that directly represents how well a plant grows. It can also be a useful parameter in computing other important features such as yield and biomass. As the number of greenhouses increase, the traditional method of measuring plant height requires more time and labor, which increases demand for developing a reliable and affordable method to perform automated height measurements of plants. This research is aimed to develop a solution to automatically measure plant height in greenhouses using low cost sensors and computer vision techniques. For this purpose, the performance of various depth sensing technologies was compared by considering the following: camera price, measurement resolution, the field of view and compatibility with the application requirements. After analyzing the alternatives, the decision was to use the Intel RealSense D435 3D Active IR Stereo Depth Camera. The algorithms developed were used to monitor plant growth of basil. Results demonstrated a promising performance of the developed system in practice.