German farmers using the Phenofieldbot robot calculate the area of ​​fields and measure the leaves of young sugar beet plants in an automated mode.

PhenoFieldBot is a standalone vehicle equipped with multiple cameras that analyze plant images. When the robot moves, its color and near infrared cameras take a series of photographs.

Individual photos in automatic mode are combined into one common image with high resolution. Plants in the pictures are automatically detected and counted. Using the coordinates of RTK-GPS, PhenoFieldBot determines each plant in the area and controls the growth of its leaves. The robot determines the weed using a special algorithm.

Phenofieldbot robot

PhenoFieldBot allows you to separately register and determine the death of plants. This information is becoming increasingly important as the ban on certain plant protection products has affected the growth of pests.

With this work, for the first time, it became possible to monitor fields at different stages of plant development. This will assess the effectiveness of new plant protection products from pests and the extent of damage from them, as well as more correctly build an integrated protection system.

Since the beginning of testing, 15 thousand measurements have been carried out on a site with a total number of plants of approximately 1 million copies. In this case, about 3 terabytes of images were received.