Engineering Commons^™

Detecting Invasive Insects Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Brian Stumph

Master's Theses (2009 -)

A key aspect to controlling and reducing the effects invasive insect species have on agriculture is to obtain knowledge about the migration patterns of these species. Current state-of-the-art methods of studying these migration patterns involve a mark-release-recapture technique, in which insects are released after being marked and researchers attempt to recapture them later. However, this approach involves a human researcher manually searching for these insects in large fields and results in very low recapture rates. This thesis proposes an automated system for detecting released insects using an unmanned aerial vehicle. Our system utilizes ultraviolet lighting technology, digital cameras, and lightweight …