Pine Seedling Detection and Registration

Abstract

Pine seedling nurseries across the United States depend on antiquated techniques and equipment to manage the country’s supply of pine seedling stock. This research is directed towards the development of a method to autonomously inventory and manage pine seedlings while in the nursery bed. Several electronic technologies are analyzed and compared to determine their performance as a pine seedling detection and registration sensor for nurseries. The technologies of interests are: photo-interrupt sensors, capacitive sensors, microwave sensors, computer vision, and radar. A key component in determining which technology to pursue was its ability to obtain an accurate inventory with low processing cost. The ability to determine the overall health of the pine seedlings was also an important consideration. The final goal of this research is to catalog each technologies performance as a pine seedling detection and registration sensor for the future development of an auto-indexing pine seedling counter.