Application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Remote Sensing for Agricultural Monitoring

Abstract

Precision agriculture and Smart farming have become the essential backbone for sustainable agricultural production by leveraging cutting-edge remote sensing and communication technologies. With the remarkable development in recent decades, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) based sensing technologies have gained rapid proliferation and exploitation in precision agriculture. The unprecedented availability of high resolution (spatial, spectral and temporal) satellite images has promoted the use of remote sensing in many PA applications, including crop monitoring, irrigation management, nutrient application, disease and pest management, and yield prediction. Using thermal infrared or hyperspectral cameras, UAV remote sensing takes extensive pictures of farmland. It also collects the reflection bands of various crops, monitors and analyzes crop growth trends, locates disease and insect pests, and determines the moisture content of the soil based on variations in the bands. This paper will discuss the basic principles of UAV remote sensing technology for monitoring crop growth, disease, and insect pests, the application of soil vegetation index monitoring, and the development prospects of UAV remote sensing in agricultural monitoring.