Plant acoustic density profile model of CTFM ultrasonic sensing

Many applications require the sensing of plants. When an ultrasonic sensor insonifies a plant, the resultant echo is the superposition of the echoes from the leaves. As a result, the echo contains information about the geometric structure of the foliage. In this paper, we present a model of sensing that facilitates the extraction of geometric features from the echo for plant classification, recognition and discrimination. We model the echo from a CTFM ultrasonic sensor with the acoustic density profile model. Then, we identify a set of features that represent plant geometric characteristics and use these to perform an inverse transform from echo features to plant geometry.

[1]  L. Kay.  Auditory perception of objects by blind persons, using a bioacoustic high resolution air sonar. , 2000, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[2]  Neil Lindsay Harper,et al.  Classifying plants with ultrasonic sensing , 1999 .

[3]  Roberto Manduchi,et al.  Ladar-Based Discrimination of Grass from Obstacles for Autonomous Navigation , 2000, ISER.

[4]  W. Kuhbauch,et al.  Plant species identification using fuzzy set theory , 1994, Proceedings of the IEEE Southwest Symposium on Image Analysis and Interpretation.

[5]  Shoichi Maeyama,et al.  Positioning by tree detection sensor and dead reckoning for outdoor navigation of a mobile robot , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE International Conference on MFI '94. Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems.

[6]  Neil Lindsay Harper.  Classification of plants the interpretation of CTFM sonar data , 1999 .

[7]  Gaines E. Miles,et al.  Application of machine vision to shape analysis in leaf and plant identification , 1993 .

[8]  Thierry Chateau,et al.  Automatic guidance of agricultural vehicles using a laser sensor. , 2000 .

[9]  Sanjiv Singh,et al.  Recent results in the grading of vegetative cuttings using computer vision , 1997, Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robot and Systems. Innovative Robotics for Real-World Applications. IROS '97.

[10]  L. Kay,et al.  A sonar aid to enhance spatial perception of the blind: engineering design and evaluation , 1974 .

[11]  Phillip J. McKerrow,et al.  Recognising plants with ultrasonic sensing for mobile robot navigation , 1999, 1999 Third European Workshop on Advanced Mobile Robots (Eurobot'99). Proceedings (Cat. No.99EX355).

[12]  Aníbal Ollero,et al.  The autonomous mobile robot AURORA for greenhouse operation , 1996, IEEE Robotics Autom. Mag..

[13]  Phillip J. McKerrow,et al.  Recognising leafy plants with in‐air sonar , 1999 .

[14]  Phillip J. McKerrow,et al.  Recognition of plants with CTFM ultrasonic range data using a neural network , 1997, Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[15]  Charles E. Thorpe,et al.  Sonar Based Outdoor Vehicle Navigation And Collision Avoidance , 1992, Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.