Green Vigilance: Drone Innovation for Early Crop Disease Detection

Project Overview

Integrating UAVs and UGVs for precision agriculture to detect plant diseases early and improve resource efficiency.

This project develops a distributed UAV-UGV system aimed at enhancing early crop disease detection. UAVs perform aerial surveys to collect spatial data, which is processed in a central station. The UGVs are then guided for targeted ground-level inspections. By combining hybrid depth sensing and asynchronous workflow, the system generates detailed 3D representations of crop fields, enabling high-accuracy disease localization.

Key Features

Hybrid Depth Sensing: Combines LiDAR and stereo vision to accumulate detailed 3D spatial data over time.
UAV-UGV Coordination: UAVs conduct initial surveys and generate heatmaps; UGVs are deployed based on this data for fine-grained field analysis.
Advanced Algorithms: Uses Weighted Least Squares (WLS) to improve UGV path estimation and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to fuse GPS and IMU data for UAV stability.
Heatmap Generation: Highlights disease-prone areas by mapping plant health variability across spatial dimensions.

System Architecture

The system operates through an asynchronous workflow: UAVs equipped with hybrid depth sensors collect high-resolution 3D data and transmit it to a centralized base station for processing. The station generates spatial maps and disease probability heatmaps, which are then used to guide UGVs for targeted ground-level operations with high accuracy.

Experimental Results

Simulations demonstrated the system’s effectiveness in detecting plant diseases and guiding ground interventions. UAV-UGV coordination significantly reduced resource usage and improved targeting efficiency. Tests under different sensor noise levels confirmed the robustness of the WLS and EKF algorithms in maintaining navigation precision and data reliability. Heatmaps and 3D models played a critical role in defining intervention strategies and reducing false detections.

Photo Gallery

Visual highlights from the project.

Video Demonstration

Short clips showcasing the UAV-UGV system in action.

Resources

Download the full project report for an in-depth analysis of system architecture, methodologies, and results.

Download Project Report (PDF)