Method and apparatus for automated plant necrosis
AssigneeDeere & Company
InventorLee Redden
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of real-time plant selection and removal from a plant field including capturing a first image of a first section of the plant field, segmenting the first image into regions indicative of individual plants within the first section, selecting the optimal plants for retention from the first image based on the first image and the previously thinned plant field sections, sending instructions to the plant removal mechanism for removal of the plants corresponding to the unselected regions of the first image from the second section before the machine passes the unselected regions, and repeating the aforementioned steps for a second section of the plant field adjacent the first section in the direction of machine travel.
Claims18
A method for a farming machine to treat a plant in a field comprising a plurality of plants, the method comprising:
- accessing an image of the field comprising the plurality of plants, the image captured as the farming machine moves through the field on a current pass;
- segmenting the image into a plurality of field regions by applying a machine learning model to the image, the machine learning model processing the image to localize the plurality of plants within the plurality of field regions, with each of the field regions localizing a plant of the plurality of plants within a two dimensional area in the image;
- selecting, for each field region of the plurality of field regions, a spray treatment for the plant localized in the field region based on characteristics describing the localized plant and parameters describing a plurality of prior plants treated by the farming machine on a previous pass of the farming machine through the field;
- and
- sending treatment instructions for each region of the plurality of field regions to a plurality of spray mechanisms of the farming machine, the treatment instructions indicating the spray treatment to apply to each region before the farming machine travels past the region in the field on the current pass.
A farming machine:
- a camera configured to capture images of a field comprising a plurality of plants as the farming machine travels through the field;
- a plurality of spray treatment mechanism;
- one or more processors;
- and
- a non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
- access an image of the field comprising the plurality of plants, the image captured as the farming machine moves through the field on a current pass;
- segment the image into a plurality of field regions by applying a machine learning model to the image, the machine learning model processing the image to localize the plurality of plants within the plurality of field regions, with each of the field regions localizing a plant of the plurality of plants within a two dimensional area in the image;
- select, for each field region of the plurality of field regions, a spray treatment for the plant localized in the field region based on characteristics describing the localized plant and parameters describing a plurality of prior plants treated by the farming machine on a previous pass of the farming machine through the field;
- and
- send treatment instructions for each region of the plurality of field regions to the plurality of spray mechanisms of the farming machine, the treatment instructions indicating the spray treatment to apply to each region before the farming machine travels past the region in the field on the current pass.
A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions for a farming machine to treat a plant in a field comprising a plurality of plants, the instructions when executed by one or more processors, causing the one or more processors to:
- accessing an image of the field comprising the plurality of plants, the image captured as the farming machine moves through the field on a current pass;
- segmenting the image into a plurality of field regions by applying a machine learning model to the image, the machine learning model processing the image to localize the plurality of plants within the plurality of field regions, with each of the field regions localizing a plant of the plurality of plants within a two-dimensional area in the image;
- selecting, for each field region of the plurality of field regions, a spray treatment for the plant localized in the field region based on characteristics describing the localized plant and parameters describing a plurality of prior plants treated by the farming machine on a previous pass of the farming machine through the field;
- and
- sending treatment instructions for each region of the plurality of field regions to a plurality of spray mechanisms of the farming machine, the treatment instructions indicating the spray treatment to apply to each region before the farming machine travels past the region in the field on the current pass.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.