Competitive Advantages
- Inexpensive low-coherence laser module
- Finds the presence of disease within a plant before visual symptoms arise
- Individual crops can be imaged and analyzed in real-time
- Combines speckle-based detection method with smartphone-based object detection system
Summary
Currently, most agricultural imaging tools rely on satellite images that can utilize a powerful zoom function to detect signs of pests, dryness, and disease. Further, these technologies are catered towards larger commercial farmers that would work for a larger cooperative. The primary goal for this invention is to utilize consumer grade drone camera and low-cost laser to acquire speckle image produced by the backscattered light of agricultural products (plants, seeds, fruits etc.). This invention utilizes similar laser speckle algorithm scheme for monitoring agricultural goods. However, this invention introduces, firstly, for illumination, off-the shelf inexpensive low-coherence laser module (~110) instead of high coherence expensive laser/lasers which generally used in traditional methods. Secondly, this invention has introduced consumer grade drone, which is equipped with camera, thereby making the whole imaging system dynamic and easily controllable. The images from the drone were post processed by custom made MATLAB code. However, the images can be real-time process on the drone -controlled smart phone as the drone camera image can be streamed to the smart phone. Additionally, the biospeckle drone can be used to determine material identification in real-time for defense applications by searching for vibrational changes within different materials to determine if there are hidden threats behind walls etc.
Preliminary results for a leaf of Capsicum annuum
Desired Partnerships
- License
- Sponsored Research
- Co-Development