Reconstruction of geo-referenced maize plants using a consumer time-of-flight camera in different agricultural environments

Abstract

Crop phenotyping is a prerequisite to enable robots doing agricultural tasks, evaluating crop status for farm management, and relating genotypes to phenotypes for crop breeding among others. Optical three dimensional (3-D) sensors have been preferred since they provide more information about the complex plant architecture. The improvement of time-of-flight (TOF) cameras together with their reduced economical costs have provided an appropriate tool for tasks that require detailed information of the agricultural environment. In this paper, 3-D reconstruction of maize is performed in different environments, from controlled greenhouse to the open field, to evaluate the capabilities of a consumer camera.