Applications of LiDAR in Agriculture and Future Research Directions.

Abstract

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors have accrued an ever-increasing presence in the agricultural sector due to their non-destructive mode of capturing data. LiDAR sensors emit pulsed light waves that return to the sensor upon bouncing off surrounding objects. The distances that the pulses travel are calculated by measuring the time for all pulses to return to the source. There are many reported applications of the data obtained from LiDAR in agricultural sectors. LiDAR sensors are widely used to measure agricultural landscaping and topography and the structural characteristics of trees such as leaf area index and canopy volume; they are also used for crop biomass estimation, phenotype characterisation, crop growth, etc. A LiDAR-based system and LiDAR data can also be used to measure spray drift and detect soil properties. It has also been proposed in the literature that crop damage detection and yield prediction can also be obtained with LiDAR data. This review focuses on different LiDAR-based system applications and data obtained from LiDAR in agricultural sectors. Comparisons of aspects of LiDAR data in different agricultural applications are also provided. Furthermore, future research directions based on this emerging technology are also presented in this review.

Plant phenotyping relevance

LiDARによる作物・樹木の構造特性、バイオマス、表現型、成長などの取得方法を農業応用として比較・総説しており、植物フェノタイピング手法のレビューが中心である。

Code and data availability

This is a review article; the authors state no new data were created or analysed, and no paper-specific datasets, images, code, or models are deposited. All URLs are generic references or cited prior work.

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