Airborne & Ground Platforms for Data Collection in Small Vineyards: Examples from the UK & SwitzerlandDavid R. Green1, Cristina Gómez1, Johannes Fahrentrapp2, & Baptiste Marteau1

1UCEMM - University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK and 2 ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland

Soil/WeedsIn rows

Vine CanopyShadow

Shadow within the canopy

Canopy shadow between rows

Leaves within the canopy

Soil

Weeds between rows

Digital Fisheye Lens for Sony W350

Apple iPhone 4s Swivl platform and remote control

GoPro Colour Vertical (Fisheye) – Chilford Hall Vineyard, UK GoPro Colour oblique Video (Fisheye) Chilford Hall Vineyard, UK

Parrot AR Drone in flightParrot AR Drone and iPad Controller DJI Phantom 1

AR Parrot Drone colour video stillCamel Valley Vineyard, Cornwall, UK

Colour density slice of AR Parrot Drone colour video stillCamel Valley Vineyard, Cornwall, UK

swingletCAM UAV Vertical Colour Photograph and NDVI for study site in Switzerland near Lake of Zurich in Wädenswil

Swivl

Digital Fisheye Lens for GoPro

GoPro Hero 2/3 Camera, WiFi Backpack and WiFi RC

Maxim iButton & Hobo Datalogger

Vine Canopy

Stabiliser bar

Hand-held

Radio ControllerSupport

Metal Plate

GoPro Video-Clips from the Model 4x4Chilford Hall Vineyard, UK4x4 with GoPro camera

4x4 with GoPro, Apple iPhone and Swivl mount

AR Parrot Drone and DJI Phantom UAV platforms carrying small still and video cameras for vertical and oblique aerial photography and video for manual interpretation or information extraction with digital image processing software

A range of off-the-shelf hardware and software for monitoring the grapevine canopy and the vineyard environment at the ground level to assess canopy characteristics and status

Coincident UAV imagery and ground-truth, and the use of digital image processing and vegetation indices for a Swiss vineyard

GoPro

INTRODUCTION

This paper presents a brief overview of some of the low-cost ground and airborne platforms and technologies now becoming available for data collection in small area vineyards. Low-cost UAV or UAS platforms and cameras are now widely available as the means to collect both vertical and oblique aerial still photography and airborne videography in vineyards. The paper is illustrated with some examples from the UK and Switzerland.

TECHNOLOGY

Examples of small aerial platforms include the AR Parrot Drone, the DJI Phantom (1 and 2), and 3D Robotics IRIS+. Both fixed-wing and rotary wings platforms offer numerous advantages for aerial image acquisition including the freedom to obtain high resolution imagery at any time required. Imagery captured can be stored on mobile devices such as an Apple iPad and shared, written directly to a memory stick or card, or saved to the Cloud.

ADVANTAGES

For the small vineyard with limited financial resources, this technology has a number of distinct advantages to aid in vineyard management:

• It is relatively cheap to purchase• Requires a relatively short learning curve to use and to master• Can fly autonomously over ground control units for repetitive areal

coverage enabling reliable monitoring

and

• Information can easily be analysed and integrated with GIS with minimal expertise.

INFORMATION

The imagery can either be visually interpreted or subjected to semi-automated analysis using digital image processing software to extract information about vine status or vineyard environment. At the ground-level, a radio-controlled 'rugged' model 4x4 vehicle can also be used as a mobile platform to carry a number of sensors (e.g. a Go-Pro camera) around a vineyard, thereby facilitating quick and easy field data collection from both within the vine canopy and rows.

SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS

As these technologies continue to evolve very quickly, and more lightweight sensors become available for the small ground and airborne platforms, this will offer even more possibilities for a wider range of information to be acquired to aid in the monitoring, mapping, and management of the vineyard. Whilst there are still some limitations which constrain their use, including battery power and flight time, data connectivity, and payload capacity, such platforms offer quick, low-cost, easy, and repeatable ways to capture valuable contextual data for small vineyards, complementing other sources of data used in precision viticulture (PV) and vineyard management.

REFERENCES

Fahrentrapp, J., Häfele, M., Schumacher, P., Gomez, C., & Green, D.R., 2015. Physiological differences in highly fragmented vineyards using NIR/RGB UAV photography. Proceedings of GIESCO - 2015, Narbonne, France, June 2015.

Green, D.R., 2012. Geospatial Tools and Techniques for Vineyard Management in the Twenty-First Century. In: The Geography of Wine. (Dougherty, P., Ed.) Springer, The Netherlands, pp. 227-245.

Airborne & Ground Platforms for Data Collection in Small Vineyards: Examples from the UK & SwitzerlandDavid R. Green1, Cristina Gómez1, Johannes Fahrentrapp2, & Baptiste Marteau1

1UCEMM - University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK and 2 ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland

EGU 2015 | Thursday 16th April 2015 | 8:00-19:30 | Blue Posters | B1076 | 17:30-19:00 | Vienna, Austria

Soil/WeedsIn rows

Vine CanopyShadow

Shadow within the canopy

Canopy shadow between rows

Leaves within the canopy

Soil

Weeds between rows

Digital Fisheye Lens for Sony W350

Apple iPhone 4s Swivl platform and remote control

GoPro Colour Vertical (Fisheye) – Chilford Hall Vineyard, UK GoPro Colour oblique Video (Fisheye) Chilford Hall Vineyard, UK

Parrot AR Drone in flightParrot AR Drone and iPad Controller DJI Phantom 1

AR Parrot Drone colour video stillCamel Valley Vineyard, Cornwall, UK Colour density slice of AR Parrot Drone colour

video still Camel Valley Vineyard, Cornwall, UK

swingletCAM UAV Vertical Colour Photograph and NDVI for study site in Switzerland near Lake of Zurich in Wädenswil

Swivl

Digital Fisheye Lens for GoPro

GoPro Hero 2/3 Camera, WiFi Backpack and WiFi RC

Maxim iButton & Hobo Datalogger

Vine Canopy

Stabiliser bar

Hand-held

Radio Controller

Support

Metal Plate

GoPro Video-Clips from the Model 4x4Chilford Hall Vineyard, UK

4x4 with GoPro camera 4x4 with GoPro, Apple iPhone and Swivl mount

AR Parrot Drone and DJI Phantom UAV platforms carrying small still and video cameras for vertical and oblique aerial photography and video for manual interpretation or information extraction with digital image processing software

A range of off-the-shelf hardware and software for monitoring the grapevine canopy and the vineyard environment at the ground level to assess canopy characteristics and status

Coincident UAV imagery and ground-truth, and the use of digital image processing and vegetation indices for a Swiss vineyard

GoPro