Development and Use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for Crop Stress Monitoring Research.

The use of remote sensing technologies for crop management have steadily grown in recent years with the development of high resolution satellite platforms and increasing availability of commercial aircraft providers of multispectral imagery. The use of satellite or full-size aircraft limits the frequency with which aerial imagery can be obtained, due to cost and practical limits on re-visit times. This limit on temporal resolution of remotely sensed data results in some uncertainty of optimal growth stages for collection of remotely sensed data, particularly if crop stress originates from multiple sources. We developed a remote sensing platform based on a Neural-Robotics AutoExpress G autonomous helicopter, using three cameras to collect aerial images of a developing corn crop frequently during the growing season. The system collects red, green, blue and near-infrared bands with standard and modified digital still cameras, as well as transmits an image by video link to the ground during flight. The study to be conducted in 2008 will have multiple sources of stress imposed (water, nitrogen, weeds, corn rootworm and foliar disease). Information collected from the study conducted during the 2008 growing season will be presented in the paper.