Testing a novel custom-built low-cost platform for measuring crop height

摘要

Crop height can be used as a proxy for yield to provide fast, non-destructive estimates of farm-based forage supply. In this work we developed a novel low-cost ultrasonic sensor (US) based platform for measuring crop height on-the-go. The tool was tested on a well-developed broad-leaf row crop spaced 0.05 m in the row and with a 0.3 m inter-row. US data were able to reproduce canopy profile, as high correlation (r=0.7) between sensor and ground-truth series was found. The sensor slightly underestimated crop height but well discerned within row height broad variability.