Agricultural aircraft provide a readily available and versatile platform for airborne remote sensing. Although various airborne imaging systems are available, most of these systems are either too expensive or too complex to be of practical use for day-to-day aerial application operations. The objective of this study was to develop a low-cost, user-friendly imaging system that can be easily installed on aerial applicators. An imaging system was assembled using off-the-shelf electronics. The system consisted of a digital camera to capture color images, a GPS receiver to geotag images, a video monitor to view live images, and a remote control to trigger the camera. The camera was attached to an aerial applicator and the GPS unit and video monitor were installed in the cockpit. The parameters of the camera were optimized to acquire images under various altitudes, speeds, and ground cover conditions. Geotagged images taken from individual sites or large areas were viewed and mosaicked together using free and inexpensive software. Aerial applicators can assemble such a system and use it to generate additional revenues from remote sensing services. Analysis of sample images has shown that the imaging system has potential for crop condition assessment and pest detection.
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Yang et al. (2015) studied this question.