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| If multispectral imaging can't (reliably) deliver on the claims, then why over complicate the job by doing anything other than RGB? There is value in RGB, and you can avoid the uncertainties of the index maps by using something that our eyes and brains are used to making sense of. I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here and there IS value in the various indices, but they need to be carefully acquired and created and used in the correct manner.
I feel like we're in the stage of trying to finely tune the acquisition part so that the data interpretation software is able to offer assessments. I don't really think that automation is possible until you can have some sort of consistency with the data that's being plugged into it. I feel like there is a new camera announced every other week that is starting to address some of these issues, by having a built in IMU and using light sensors. Luckily, they're becoming much more affordable too.
The converted cameras are cool and definitely stuff have their use/place, but I feel like it takes so much work after the flight to try to prepare the images that it's just a hassle anymore. Some cameras now can spit out pictures that let you avoid a lot of that work, others are making progress in that direction.
NDVI is advertised as a "crop health map", but is primarily tied to LAI. It can be used in combination with other indices to try to identify specific traits or deficiencies in certain crops and certain soil types, but it's not quite to the point where it can be done automatically. I know there is a company in Europe (Germany?) that gives estimated biomass and nitrogen content results from drone flights, and they have restrictions on the conditions and cameras that they'll process. That's a good sign, because they're normalizing as many variables as possible before giving those rates. I have no idea whatsoever if they're accurate or not, but it's a good sign to me personally.
That's a long way of saying that yes, indices like NDVI can be useful in certain situations, but normal pictures have a clear value in most situations. Research projects aside, a good bit of our jobs are just maps made from these.
Our thermal camera is just set up for a live feed and firefighting right now, I've never mapped with it. There are some decent opportunities outside of Ag for them, but i'm pretty ignorant to the uses in Ag. If I remember right about what our Agronomist wants to test them for, it was something to do with irrigation, as well as soil temperature variance throughout the day. Not sure on that one. | |
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Introduction from "the other side of the Aisle"
