Agricultural environment monitoring combined with quadrotor aircraft control algorithm

The real-time monitoring of the environment data of crop growth and the status of crop maturity and fruit and vegetable image information is necessary in traditional agricultural production. However, the monitoring methods of crop growth are mostly aimed at individual monitoring rather than overall monitoring. The scope of manual monitoring is often limited because of area, environment, and weather. Moreover, manual monitoring is time-consuming and laborious, and universality is a prominent issue, and they lead to reduced certainties of agricultural environmental monitoring and deviations in data collection. Consequently, the mechanism and control algorithm in large-scale farm environment monitoring based on the quadrotor aircraft was proposed. STM32 was used as the core controller, and the proposed algorithm was combined with the OpenCV pattern recognition module, the 5.8 G wireless image transmission module, and the 2.4 G wireless data transmission module. The control system processed the agricultural image information and analysed the pesticide concentration and environmental temperature and humidity in the growing fruit and vegetable environment to control and monitor the agricultural environment. The accuracy of the selected control algorithm was verified by experimental data. Results demonstrate that the quadrotor aircraft can realize high-precision autonomous flight according to satellite positioning and the image recognition of low-altitude ground signs. The quadrotor aircraft can also independently monitor agricultural environment data by collecting high-definition images of fruits and vegetables and transmit the data and images to the ground station by wireless communication technology. This study provides references in the fields of system modelling, data processing, and control strategy to solve the contradiction between the low efficiency of manual monitoring and the randomness of data acquisition in extensive agricultural areas, subsequently realizing the application of quadrotor aircraft in agricultural monitoring. © 2019 Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology.