Our main contributions on this project are:
1/ Ground intervention on the field of the UGV (a Bonirob):
The Flourish ground intervention module is a self-sustained system designed to achieve mechanical weed removal and selective spraying in on-field operation, which consists of the weed detection module, tracking module, and two treatment modules : the mechanical weed treatment one and the selective spraying one.
In this project, we developped the tracking module and integrated all other involved modules with a multiple-non-overlapping-cameras setup. Our proposed system is able to precisely track detected targets over cameras without overlapping areas and predict the triggering timing of each target for intervention. Our method is implemented and evaluated on BoniRob, and has been tested on the field : the experimental results demonstrate that our proposed system can accurately stamp or spray targets in various terrain conditions.
The tracking module:
The module is explained on the picture below: the ground is moving to the right, the same target is shown at different times:
When a plant enters the field of view of Camera 1, it is classified as crop or weed by the classifier, the results of the classification are received just before the plant leaves the field of view of Camera 1. The plants classified as weeds (the targets) are tracked in Camera 1 using visual odometry, and the prediction of the position of the target is corrected with an observation and a template matching.
The targets are then tracked the same way between the two Cameras, and the position of the target in the field of view of Camera 2 is predicted and corrected. Then it is predicted and corrected again in the field of view of Camera 2 to predict an accurate triggering time for the stamper (the weed removal module).