Abstract
ABSTRACT Counting maize tassels in field conditions is predominantly
done manually. Recently, computer-vision based methods have been
utilized to detect tassels from images captured by UAV transects or
poled-mounted cameras [1], [2], [3]. Once tassels are
detected, deep-learning based local regression methods, Tasselnet, have
been used to estimate in-field tassel counts [4]. However, field
images are mostly captured over a period of time. Consequently, the
input images in the foregoing Tasselnet technique are not independent
but often form unequal sequences of correlated images. As such, the
temporal sequence of images offers information about the growth
trajectory of the plants. We propose a hybrid model that (a) utilizes
convolutional neural network-based tassel localization in images, and
(b) drives the local count of tassels utilizing the plant growth
trajectory learned from the time-series of images. The resulting model
can also handle important auxiliary information, obtained from in-field
sensors (for example: soil moisture, air temperature etc.), that impacts
plant growth and tassel counts. We implement our methodology on
benchmark dataset [4] and compare our results with the SOTA
Tasselnet [5]. Our initial results suggest that our technique is
computationally viable and can produce accurate point estimates of
tassel counts along with interval estimates capturing the precision of
our estimates. Keywords: Computer vision, Convolutional neural networks,
Deep learning, Maize tassels, Time-series. REFERENCES [1] Shi, Y.,
Alzadjali, A., Alali, M., Veeranampalayam-Sivakumar, A. N., Deogun, J.,
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