Application of machine learning for the evaluation of turfgrass plots using aerial images

Historically, investigation of turfgrass characteristics have been limited to visual ratings. Although relevant information may result from such evaluations, final inferences may be questionable because of the subjective nature in which the data is collected. Recent advances in computer vision techniques allow researchers to objectively measure turfgrass characteristics such as percent ground cover, turf color, and turf quality from the digital images. This paper focuses on developing a methodology for automated assessment of turfgrass quality from aerial images. Images of several turfgrass plots of varying quality were gathered using a camera mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle. The quality of these plots were also evaluated based on visual ratings. The goal was to use the aerial images to generate quality evaluations on a regular basis for the optimization of water treatment. Aerial images are used to train a neural network so that appropriate features such as intensity, color, and texture of the turfgrass are extracted from these images. Neural network is a nonlinear classifier commonly used in machine learning. The output of the neural network trained model is the ratings of the grass, which is compared to the visual ratings. Currently, the quality and the color of turfgrass, measured as the greenness of the grass, are evaluated. The textures are calculated using the Gabor filter and co-occurrence matrix. Other classifiers such as support vector machines and simpler linear regression models such as Ridge regression and LARS regression are also used. The performance of each model is compared. The results show encouraging potential for using machine learning techniques for the evaluation of turfgrass quality and color.