Design and Iimplementation of a Precision Sprayer System for Weed Management Using Computer Vision System (Case Study: Sugarbeet Farm)

One of the objectives of precision agriculture is to minimize the volume of herbicide application by using weed management systems. To achieve  this goal, a system based on image processing techniques was developed to detect weeds. In the proposed method, HSV color space was used to discriminate between vegetation and background, and between crops and weeds. In this research, the H component of HSV color space along with suitable erosion and dilation were used to automatically segment background (soil) and foreground (weed). According to what was  obtained, the algorithm could identify weed from sugar beet plants with the accuracy of 94%. The intelligent sprayer system, in the field trials, in comparison with conventional sprayers (Buferagri sprayer), reduced 67.86% of volume of herbicide due to application of computer vision. The use of this method, as an intelligent sprayer system in sugar beet fields, is recommended.