Engineering Commons^™

Development Of An Optical Sensor For Real-Time Weed Detection Using Laser Based Spectroscopy, Arie Jacobus Paap

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The management of weeds in agriculture is a time consuming and expensive activity, including in Australia where the predominant strategy is blanket spraying of herbicides. This approach wastes herbicide by applying it in areas where there are no weeds. Discrimination of different plant species can be performed based on the spectral reflectance of the leaves. This thesis describes the development of a sensor for automatic spot spraying of weeds within crop rows. The sensor records the relative intensity of reflected light in three narrow wavebands using lasers as an illumination source.

A prototype weed sensor which had been previously developed …