Machine vision detection parameters for plant species identification

Machine vision based on classical image processing techniques has the potential to be a useful tool for plant detection and identification. Plant identification is needed for weed detection, herbicide application or other efficient chemical spot spraying operations. The key to successful detection and identification of plants as species types is the segmentation of plants from background pixel regions. In particular, it would be beneficial to segment individual leaves from tops of canopies as well. The segmentation process yields an edge or binary image which contains shape feature information. Results indicate that red-green-blue (RGB) formats might provide the best segmentation criteria, based on models of human color perception. The binary image can be also used as a template to investigate textural features of the plant pixel region, using gray image co-occurrence matrices. Texture features considers leaf venation, colors, or additional canopy structure that might be used to identify various type of grasses or broadleaf plants.