Processing of point cloud data from ToF camera for the localisation of ground-based crop

This paper describes an approach that analyses point cloud information from a Time-of-Flight (ToF) camera to identify the location of foremost spring onions along the crop bed, for the intention of robotic manipulation. The process uses a combination of 2D image processing on the amplitude data, as well as depth analysis on the point cloud information, extracted from the camera to locate the desired object. Whilst the experimental results demonstrated the robustness of this approach, further testing is required to determine the ability of system to cope with different scenarios that exists in the naturally varying environment. Finally, it is important to validate the accuracy of the system in the physical world by integrating the localization algorithm to a robotic manipulation system.

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