Multi-Projector Lighting for Crop Area Imaging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems for treating plants in agriculture struggle with obtaining high-quality images of plants, which hampers the efficient identification of plants to be treated and leads to increased consumption of treatment products and environmental impact.
Innovation Solution
A plant treatment system equipped with a spray boom featuring a plurality of projectors that provide illumination to the crop area, ensuring each point in the scene receives light from at least two projectors in different orientations, resulting in improved image quality and homogeneity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If a single lighting source is used to illuminate the crop area, then the device complexity is reduced, but the image quality and luminance homogeneity deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The lighting arrangement is segmented into multiple projectors distributed along the spray boom, with each projector providing illumination from a different orientation. This segmentation allows each projector to cover a specific zone, ensuring that every point in the crop area receives light from at least two different directions, thereby improving image quality and luminance homogeneity while maintaining manageable system complexity through modular distribution
Solution Approach 2:
Multiple light beams from different projectors are merged to illuminate the same crop area. The projectors are positioned and oriented such that their light beams overlap in the crop area, creating a combined illumination effect where each point receives light from multiple orientations. This merging of light sources ensures uniform luminance distribution and high-quality images for plant identification
2Manufacturing precision
If multiple projectors are used to improve image quality, then the luminance homogeneity improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Each projector is positioned at specific locations along the spray boom and oriented to provide targeted illumination to specific zones in the crop area. The projectors are arranged so that their light beams overlap in predetermined patterns, ensuring that each local point in the crop area receives light from multiple orientations. This local quality approach optimizes luminance homogeneity in each zone while distributing the complexity across multiple simple, identical projector units
Solution Approach 2:
The lighting arrangement transitions from a single-point or single-line light source to a distributed array of projectors positioned at multiple locations along the spray boom. By adding the spatial dimension of multiple projector positions and orientations, the system achieves superior luminance homogeneity across the entire crop area, transforming the illumination geometry from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional coverage
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system achieves improved image quality with reduced luminance deviation, allowing for more efficient plant identification and minimizing the use of treatment products, thereby reducing environmental impact.
Implementation Method 1
an arrangement for lighting the crop area captured by the cameras, said apparatus being characterized in that the lighting arrangement comprises a plurality of projectors distributed along the boom and having fields of illumination such that each point of a scene captured by a camera receives light from at least two projectors in at least two different orientations
Data Source
AI summary
A system for treating plants for use in agriculture, comprising a spray boom provided with a plurality of spray nozzles supplied by a spray control device, the apparatus comprising a set of cameras capable of capturing images of a crop area, a digital processing device capable of analyzing the images captured by the camera, identifying plants to be treated and sending commands to the spray control device with a view to selectively spraying a product on plants to be treated, the apparatus also comprising an arrangement for lighting the crop area captured by the cameras.According to the invention, the lighting arrangement comprises a plurality of projectors distributed along the boom and having fields of illumination such that each point of a scene captured by a camera receives light from at least two projectors in at least two different orientations in a plane passing through the point and the projectors in question.