CNN-LSTM framework to automatically detect anomalies in farmland using aerial images from UAVs

Abstract

Using aerial inspection techniques in farmlands can yield vital data instrumental in mitigating various impediments to optimizing farming practices. Farmland anomalies (standing water and clusters of weeds) can impede farming practices, leading to the improper utilization of farmland and the disruption of agricultural development. Utilizing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for remote sensing is a highly effective method for obtaining extensive imagery of farmland. Visual data analytics in the context of automatic pattern recognition from collected data is valuable for advancing Deep Learning (DL) -assisted farming models. This approach shows significant potential in enhancing agricultural productivity by effectively capturing crop patterns and identifying anomalies in farmland. Furthermore, it offers prospective solutions to address the inherent barriers farmers encounter. This study introduces a novel framework, namely the hybrid Convolutional Neural Networks and Long Short-Term Memory (HCNN-LSTM), which aims to detect anomalies in farmland using images obtained from UAVs automatically. The system employs a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for deep feature extraction, while Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is utilized for the detection task, leveraging the extracted features. By integrating these two Deep Learning (DL) architectures, the system attains an extensive knowledge of farm conditions, facilitating the timely identification of irregularities such as the presence of water, clusters of weeds, nutrient deficit, and crop disease. The proposed methodology is trained and evaluated using the Agriculture-Vision challenge database. The results obtained from the experiment demonstrate that the proposed system has achieved a high level of accuracy, with a value of 99.7%, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed approach.