0000000000823692

AUTHOR

B. Chopinet

Optimizing Hough transform for fertilizer spreading optical control

International audience; In Europe, centrifugal spreading is a widely used method for agricultural soil fertilization. In this broadcasting method, fertilizer particles fall onto a spinning disk, are accelerated by a vane, and afterward are ejected into the field. To predict and control the spread pattern, a low-cost, embeddable technology adapted to farm implements must be developed. We focus on obtaining the velocity and the direction of fertilizer granules when they begin their flight by means of a simple imaging system. We first show that the outlet angle of the vane is a bounded value and that its measurement provides the outlet velocity of the particle. Consequently, a simple camera un…

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Centrifugal spreading : motion blurred images to determine the three components of fertiliser outlet velocity

In the optical control of centrifugal spreading, the use of a single CCD camera to measure the outlet velocity is not limited to flat discs and 2D motion estimation. Combining the kinetic study of the fertiliser motion on the vane and the geometric analysis of image acquisition, the 3D components of the outlet velocity can be deduced from motion blurred images in the case of a traditional concave disc. The estimation of the horizontal and vertical outlet velocities is useful to predict spread patterns using ballistic flight models. This opens up the possibility to implement simple spreader test tools for quality diagnoses or sensors for feedback loop adjustments.

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