hyperspectral Archives - Agri-EPI Centre

Tag Archive for: hyperspectral

Spectral imaging for the agriculture industry

Spectral imaging as a general concept combines characteristics of imaging and spectroscopy technologies. Optical spectral imaging particularly makes use of visible, near infrared and short-wave infrared spectral range, has been demonstrated to be a very powerful tool in identifying, classifying, and mapping specific targets across whole scenery image in various application scenarios.

Spectral Imaging is especially useful in the agricultural domain, where crop/vegetation in different conditions has unique spectral characteristics. With more robust and rugged imaging product integrated with various platforms, agri-tech has been undertaking revolutionary improvements for remote sensed inspection. Multispectral imaging, hyperspectral imaging, and SIF (solar-induced fluorescence) imaging can be broadly derived depending on spectral bands and resolution needed.

Eliot Dixon, Head of Engineering at Agri-EPI Centre said:
“We have established a strong sensing team within the company, able to deploy a range of spectral imagers into agriculture including some exciting unique capabilities. With our contextual farm data, storage facilities and analysis tools this is a key data service for developers which is available to all.”

Multispectral Imaging
The advantage of multi-spectral imaging is that it extends human sight sensitivity beyond visible spectrum. Some wavelengths that are widely recognized for particular applications, such as normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI), can be deployed into multi-spectral imaging. Nonetheless, it has been proven to be very useful in many other fields, greatly empowering advancement of agriculture. And the adoption of UAV has made it possible to make large-scale mapping and thus better agricultural management.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested MicaSense Altum sensor covering RGB, NIR, Red Edge and LWIR, which can be operated easily on VTOL UAV platform.

With this multi-spectral imaging system, several important vegetation indexes such as red edge, NDVI, can be quickly collected and mapped across survey fields.

Hyperspectral Imaging
Hyperspectral imaging captures images at hundreds of wavelengths, creating a detailed spectral signature of objects and materials. Compared to multispectral imagery, hyperspectral imagery measures energy in narrower and more numerous bands, thus giving much more information on target. Hyperspectral image data is a datacube, where each pixel holds full spectrum across the range. Since spectra are as unique as ‘fingerprint’ to target, hyperspectral imagery can unveil features that multispectral may miss out.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested in a range of hyperspectral imaging systems. Read below for more:

Spectral imaging brochure

Hyperspectral UAV

Agri-EPI Centre has invested in the Hyperspectral UAV.

Compared to multispectral imagery, hyperspectral imagery measures energy in narrower and more numerous bands, thus giving much more information on target. Hyperspectral image data is 3D cube, where each pixel holds a full spectrum across the range. Since spectra are as unique as ‘fingerprints’ to target, hyperspectral imagery can unveil features that multispectral imagery may miss out on.

Hyperspectral imaging technology has been under research for decades and has been demonstrated to be very powerful in many application areas including agriculture. Especially in recent years, with a more robust and rugged imaging product embedded onto the UAV platform, agri-tech has seen revolutionary improvements.

The HySpex turnkey UAV solution with Mjolnir VS-620 and Lidar includes all the necessary hardware and software for flight planning, data collection, data processing and calibration. The system is provided with a UAV platform, 3-axis gimbal mount for the hyperspectral unit with Lidar and corresponding spectral calibration, radiometric calibration and geometric calibration. The geometric calibration includes a sensor model for VNIR and SWIR hyperspectral sensor heads, subpixel co-alignment of the 2 sensor heads, boresight calibration of the 2 sensor heads and internal IMU system, boresight calibration of the Lidar unit and internal IMU system.

There’s a broad application potential, including assisting in the development of products in the following application areas:
• Drought/water/nutrient stress monitoring
• Plant pathogens detection
• Analysis of soil properties/Determination of soil types
• Land mapping
• Yield forecasting
• Land management

UAV System (XQ-1400S BFD HySpex Edition):
1. <25 kg MTOW with Mjolnir and gimbal
2. Up to 25 min flight endurance with 8 kg payload
3. Fitted with high performance GNSS/GPS and IMU to enable data to be captured to high geolocation accuracy
4. Fitted with advanced 3-axis digital gimbal to compensate for the pitching

Sensing System (HySpex Mjolnir VS-620, Velodyne VLP-32C) :
1. Fully-integrated co-aligned hyperspectral visible and near-infrared (VNIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) (400 – 2500nm) and LiDAR sensors, along with in-flight data capture and storage system
2. Spectral coverage of 400 – 2500 nm, with spectral resolution of 3 nm in VNIR and 5.1 nm over SWIR range. Bit resolution 12bit in VNIR and 16 bit in SWIR.
3. Double resolution data in the VNIR range
4. High-resolution (0.33 degree) LiDAR sensor, with 360° surround view with real-time 3D data

They Hyperspectral UAV has potential use as groundtruth technology for other technologies/systems as well.

For information on renting out our technical assets please contact team@agri-epicentre.com