UAV-Based Computer Vision System for Orchard Apple Tree Detection and Health Assessment

Abstract

Accurate and efficient orchard tree inventories are essential for acquiring up-to-date information, which is necessary for effective treatments and crop insurance purposes. Surveying orchard trees, including tasks such as counting, locating, and assessing health status, plays a vital role in predicting production volumes and facilitating orchard management. However, traditional manual inventories are known to be labor-intensive, expensive, and prone to errors. Motivated by recent advancements in UAV imagery and computer vision methods, we propose a UAV-based computer vision framework for individual tree detection and health assessment. Our proposed approach follows a two-stage process. Firstly, we propose a tree detection model by employing a hard negative mining strategy using RGB UAV images. Subsequently, we address the health classification problem by leveraging multi-band imagery-derived vegetation indices. The proposed framework achieves an F1-score of 86.24% for tree detection and an overall accuracy of 97.52% for tree health assessment. Our study demonstrates the robustness of the proposed framework in accurately assessing orchard tree health from UAV images. Moreover, the proposed approach holds potential for application in various other plantation settings, enabling plant detection and health assessment using UAV imagery.