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Understanding geometric and biophysical characteristics is essential for determining grapevine vigor and improving input management and automation in viticulture. This study compares point cloud data obtained from a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) and various UAV sensors including multispectral, panchromatic, Thermal Infrared (TIR), RGB, and LiDAR data, to estimate geometric parameters of grapevines. Descriptive statistics, linear correlations, significance using the F-test of overall significance, and box plots were used for analysis. The results indicate that 3D point clouds from these sensors can accurately estimate maximum grapevine height, projected area, and volume, though with varying degrees of accuracy. The TLS data showed the highest correlation with grapevine height (r = 0.95, p < 0.001; R2 = 0.90; RMSE = 0.027 m), while point cloud data from panchromatic, RGB, and multispectral sensors also performed well, closely matching TLS and measured values (r > 0.83, p < 0.001; R2 > 0.70; RMSE < 0.084 m). In contrast, TIR point cloud data performed poorly in estimating grapevine height (r = 0.76, p < 0.001; R2 = 0.58; RMSE = 0.147 m) and projected area (r = 0.82, p < 0.001; R2 = 0.66; RMSE = 0.165 m). The greater variability observed in projected area and volume from UAV sensors is related to the low point density associated with spatial resolution. These findings are valuable for both researchers and winegrowers, as they support the optimization of TLS and UAV sensors for precision viticulture, providing a basis for further research and helping farmers select appropriate technologies for crop monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology has emerged as a pivotal tool in viticulture, offering unique capabilities for various applications. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the current state-of-the-art applications of SAR in viticulture, highlighting its significance in addressing key challenges and enhancing viticultural practices. The historical evolution and motivations behind SAR technology are also provided, along with a demonstration of its applications within viticulture, showcasing its effectiveness in various aspects of vineyard management, including delineating vineyard boundaries, assessing grapevine health, and optimizing irrigation strategies. Furthermore, future perspectives and trends in SAR applications in viticulture are discussed, including advancements in SAR technology, integration with other remote sensing techniques, and the potential for enhanced data analytics and decision support systems. Through this article, a comprehensive understanding of the role of SAR in viticulture is provided, along with inspiration for future research endeavors in this rapidly evolving field, contributing to the sustainable development and optimization of vineyard management practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread adoption of digital technologies in educational systems has been globally reflecting a shift in pedagogic content delivery that seems to fit modern generations of students while tackling relevant challenges faced by the current scholar context, e.g., progress traceability, pedagogic content fair access and intuitive visual representativeness, mobility issue mitigation, and sustainability in crisis situations. Among these technologies, augmented reality (AR) emerges as a particularly promising approach, allowing the visualization of computer-generated interactive data on top of real-world elements, thus enhancing comprehension and intuition regarding educational content, often in mobile settings. While the application of AR to education has been widely addressed, issues related to performance interaction and cognitive performance are commonly addressed, with lesser attention paid to the limitations associated with setup complexity, mostly related to experiences configurating tools, or contextual range, i.e., technical/scientific domain targeting versatility. Therefore, this paper introduces ARPocketLab, a digital, mobile, flexible, and scalable solution designed for the dynamic needs of modern tutorship. With a dual-interface system, it allows both educators and students to interactively design and engage with AR content directly tied to educational outcomes. Moreover, ARPocketLab's design, aimed at handheld operationalization using a minimal set of physical resources, is particularly relevant in environments where educational materials are scarce or in situations where remote learning becomes necessary. Its versatility stems from the fact that it only requires a marker or a surface (e.g., a table) to function at full capacity. To evaluate the solution, tests were conducted with 8th-grade Portuguese students within the context of Physics and Chemistry subject. Results demonstrate the application's effectiveness in providing didactic assistance, with positive feedback not only in terms of usability but also regarding learning performance. The participants also reported openness for the adoption of AR in pedagogic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bologna Declaration has opened a stage of big and deep changes in the internal university organization, external cooperation, teaching models and methods, among other., all over the European countries. Here we will present and discuss a pilot experience conducted at the Engineering Department of the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal, during the second year of that transition period. In brief, we will present a set of non-mandatory courses proposed to the students of each individual syllabus, with one hundred hours duration, each, approximately seven hours/week, fifteen weeks long, with the permanent help of a specialized trainer to aid the students in their "homework". The formal bureaucratic transition is also presented. Design and implementation issues, supported on problem-based learning and experimental lab learning classes, final assessment results, as well as the opinion of the students, are presented and analyzed. We believe that this methodology helped to make the transition smoother to the students, but also to the teaching staff.

The proliferation of classification-capable artificial intelligence (AI) across a wide range of domains (e.g., agriculture, construction, etc.) has been allowed to optimize and complement several tasks, typically operationalized by humans. The computational training that allows providing such support is frequently hindered by various challenges related to datasets, including the scarcity of examples and imbalanced class distributions, which have detrimental effects on the production of accurate models. For a proper approach to these challenges, strategies smarter than the traditional brute force-based K-fold cross-validation or the naivety of hold-out are required, with the following main goals in mind: (1) carrying out one-shot, close-to-optimal data arrangements, accelerating conventional training optimization; and (2) aiming at maximizing the capacity of inference models to its fullest extent while relieving computational burden. To that end, in this paper, two image-based feature-aware dataset splitting approaches are proposed, hypothesizing a contribution towards attaining classification models that are closer to their full inference potential. Both rely on strategic image harvesting: while one of them hinges on weighted random selection out of a feature-based clusters set, the other involves a balanced picking process from a sorted list that stores data features' distances to the centroid of a whole feature space. Comparative tests on datasets related to grapevine leaves phenotyping and bridge defects showcase promising results, highlighting a viable alternative to K-fold cross-validation and hold-out methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the use of remote sensing data obtained from satellite or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery has grown in popularity for crop classification tasks such as yield prediction, soil classification or crop mapping. The ready availability of information, with improved temporal, radiometric, and spatial resolution, has resulted in the accumulation of vast amounts of data. Meeting the demands of analysing this data requires innovative solutions, and artificial intelligence techniques offer the necessary support. This systematic review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of deep learning techniques for crop classification using remote sensing data from aerial imagery. The reviewed papers focus on a variety of deep learning architectures, including convolutional neural networks (CNNs), long short-term memory networks, transformers, and hybrid CNN-recurrent neural network models, and incorporate techniques such as data augmentation, transfer learning, and multimodal fusion to improve model performance. The review analyses the use of these techniques to boost crop classification accuracy by developing new deep learning architectures or by combining various types of remote sensing data. Additionally, it assesses the impact of factors like spatial and spectral resolution, image annotation, and sample quality on crop classification. Ensembling models or integrating multiple data sources tends to enhance the classification accuracy of deep learning models. Satellite imagery is the most commonly used data source due to its accessibility and typically free availability. The study highlights the requirement for large amounts of training data and the incorporation of non-crop classes to enhance accuracy and provide valuable insights into the current state of deep learning models and datasets for crop classification tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, insect pests are the primary reason for reduced crop yield and quality. Although pesticides are commonly used to control and eliminate these pests, they can have adverse effects on the environment, human health, and natural resources. As an alternative, integrated pest management has been devised to enhance insect pest control, decrease the excessive use of pesticides, and enhance the output and quality of crops. With the improvements in artificial intelligence technologies, several applications have emerged in the agricultural context, including automatic detection, monitoring, and identification of insects. The purpose of this article is to outline the leading techniques for the automated detection of insects, highlighting the most successful approaches and methodologies while also drawing attention to the remaining challenges and gaps in this area. The aim is to furnish the reader with an overview of the major developments in this field. This study analysed 92 studies published between 2016 and 2022 on the automatic detection of insects in traps using deep learning techniques. The search was conducted on six electronic databases, and 36 articles met the inclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were studies that applied deep learning techniques for insect classification, counting, and detection, written in English. The selection process involved analysing the title, keywords, and abstract of each study, resulting in the exclusion of 33 articles. The remaining 36 articles included 12 for the classification task and 24 for the detection task. Two main approaches—standard and adaptable—for insect detection were identified, with various architectures and detectors. The accuracy of the classification was found to be most influenced by dataset size, while detection was significantly affected by the number of classes and dataset size. The study also highlights two challenges and recommendations, namely, dataset characteristics (such as unbalanced classes and incomplete annotation) and methodologies (such as the limitations of algorithms for small objects and the lack of information about small insects). To overcome these challenges, further research is recommended to improve insect pest management practices. This research should focus on addressing the limitations and challenges identified in this article to ensure more effective insect pest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperspectral aerial imagery is becoming increasingly available due to both technology evolution and a somewhat affordable price tag. However, selecting a proper UAV + hyperspectral sensor combo to use in specific contexts is still challenging and lacks proper documental support. While selecting an UAV is more straightforward as it mostly relates with sensor compatibility, autonomy, reliability and cost, a hyperspectral sensor has much more to be considered. This note provides an assessment of two hyperspectral sensors (push-broom and snapshot) regarding practicality and suitability, within a precision viticulture context. The aim is to provide researchers, agronomists, winegrowers and UAV pilots with dependable data collection protocols and methods, enabling them to achieve faster processing techniques and helping to integrate multiple data sources. Furthermore, both the benefits and drawbacks of using each technology within a precision viticulture context are also highlighted. Hyperspectral sensors, UAVs, flight operations, and the processing methodology for each imaging type' datasets are presented through a qualitative and quantitative analysis. For this purpose, four vineyards in two countries were selected as case studies. This supports the extrapolation of both advantages and issues related with the two types of hyperspectral sensors used, in different contexts. Sensors' performance was compared through the evaluation of field operations complexity, processing time and qualitative accuracy of the results, namely the quality of the generated hyperspectral mosaics. The results shown an overall excellent geometrical quality, with no distortions or overlapping faults for both technologies, using the proposed mosaicking process and reconstruction. By resorting to the multi-site assessment, the qualitative and quantitative exchange of information throughout the UAV hyperspectral community is facilitated. In addition, all the major benefits and drawbacks of each hyperspectral sensor regarding its operation and data features are identified. Lastly, the operational complexity in the context of precision agriculture is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proximity sensing approaches with a wide array of sensors available for use in precision viticulture contexts can nowadays be considered both well-know and mature technologies. Still, several in-field practices performed throughout different crops rely on direct visual observation supported on gained experience to assess aspects of plants' phenological development, as well as indicators relating to the onset of common plagues and diseases. Aiming to mimic in-field direct observation, this paper presents VineInspector: a low-cost, self-contained and easy-to-install system, which is able to measure microclimatic parameters, and also to acquire images using multiple cameras. It is built upon a stake structure, rendering it suitable for deployment across a vineyard. The approach through which distinguishable attributes are detected, classified and tallied in the periodically acquired images, makes use of artificial intelligence approaches. Furthermore, it is made available through an IoT cloud-based support system. VineInspector was field-tested under real operating conditions to assess not only the robustness and the operating functionality of the hardware solution, but also the AI approaches' accuracy. Two applications were developed to evaluate VineInspector's consistency while a viticulturist' assistant in everyday practices. One was intended to determine the size of the very first grapevines' shoots, one of the required parameters of the well known 3–10 rule to predict primary downy mildew infection. The other was developed to tally grapevine moth males captured in sex traps. Results show that VineInspector is a logical step in smart proximity monitoring by mimicking direct visual observation from experienced viticulturists. While the latter traditionally are responsible for a set of everyday practices in the field, these are time and resource consuming. VineInspector was proven to be effective in two of these practices, performing them automatically. Therefore, it enables both the continuous monitoring and assessment of a vineyard's phenological development in a more efficient manner, making way to more assertive and timely practices against pests and diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To differentiate between canopy and vegetation cover is particularly challenging. Nonetheless, it is pivotal in obtaining the exact crops' vegetation when using remote-sensing data. In this article, a method to automatically estimate and extract vineyards' canopy is proposed. It combines vegetation indices and digital elevation models - derived from high-resolution images, acquired using unmanned aerial vehicles - to differentiate between vines' canopy and inter-row vegetation cover. This enables the extraction of relevant information from a specific vineyard plot. The proposed method was applied to data acquired from some vineyards located in Portugal's north-eastern region, and the resulting parameters were validated. It proved to be an effective method when applied with consumer-grade sensors, carried by unmanned aerial vehicles. Moreover, it also proved to be a fast and efficient way to extract vineyard information, enabling vineyard plots mapping for precision viticulture management tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional imagery--provided, for example, by RGB and/or NIR sensors--has proven to be useful in many agroforestry applications. However, it lacks the spectral range and precision to profile materials and organisms that only hyperspectral sensors can provide. This kind of high-resolution spectroscopy was firstly used in satellites and later in manned aircraft, which are significantly expensive platforms and extremely restrictive due to availability limitations and/or complex logistics. More recently, UAS have emerged as a very popular and cost-effective remote sensing technology, composed of aerial platforms capable of carrying small-sized and lightweight sensors. Meanwhile, hyperspectral technology developments have been consistently resulting in smaller and lighter sensors that can currently be integrated in UAS for either scientific or commercial purposes. The hyperspectral sensors' ability for measuring hundreds of bands raises complexity when considering the sheer quantity of acquired data, whose usefulness depends on both calibration and corrective tasks occurring in pre- and post-flight stages. Further steps regarding hyperspectral data processing must be performed towards the retrieval of relevant information, which provides the true benefits for assertive interventions in agricultural crops and forested areas. Considering the aforementioned topics and the goal of providing a global view focused on hyperspectral-based remote sensing supported by UAV platforms, a survey including hyperspectral sensors, inherent data processing and applications focusing both on agriculture and forestry--wherein the combination of UAV and hyperspectral sensors plays a center role--is presented in this paper. Firstly, the advantages of hyperspectral data over RGB imagery and multispectral data are highlighted. Then, hyperspectral acquisition devices are addressed, including sensor types, acquisition modes and UAV-compatible sensors that can be used for both research and commercial purposes. Pre-flight operations and post-flight pre-processing are pointed out as necessary to ensure the usefulness of hyperspectral data for further processing towards the retrieval of conclusive information. With the goal of simplifying hyperspectral data processing--by isolating the common user from the processes' mathematical complexity--several available toolboxes that allow a direct access to level-one hyperspectral data are presented. Moreover, research works focusing the symbiosis between UAV-hyperspectral for agriculture and forestry applications are reviewed, just before the paper's conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is twofold: first, to present a survey of the actual and most advanced methods related to the use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) that emerged in the past few years due to the technological advancements that allowed the miniaturization of components, leading to the availability of small-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and high quality and cost-effective sensors; second, to advice the target audience – mostly farmers and foresters – how to choose the appropriate UAV and imaging sensor, as well as suitable approaches to get the expected and needed results of using technological tools to extract valuable information about agroforestry systems and its dynamics, according to their parcels’ size and crop’s types.Following this goal, this work goes beyond a survey regarding UAS and their applications, already made by several authors. It also provides recommendations on how to choose both the best sensor and UAV, in according with the required application. Moreover, it presents what can be done with the acquired sensors’ data through theuse of methods, procedures, algorithms and arithmetic operations. Finally, some recent applications in the agroforestry research area are presented, regarding the main goal of each analysed studies, the used UAV, sensors, and the data processing stage to reach conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Crop sustainability is essential for balancing economic development and environmental care, mainly in strong and very competitive regions in the agri-food sector, such as the Region of Murcia in Spain, considered to be the orchard of Europe, despite being a semi-arid area with an important scarcity of fresh water. In this region, farmers apply efficient techniques to minimize supplies and maximize quality and productivity; however, the effects of climate change and the degradation of significant natural environments, such as, the "Mar Menor", the most extent saltwater lagoon of Europe, threatened by resources overexploitation, lead to the search of even better irrigation management techniques to avoid certain effects which could damage the quaternary aquifer connected to such lagoon. This paper describes the Irriman Platform, a system based on Cloud Computing techniques, which includes low-cost wireless data loggers, capable of acquiring data from a wide range of agronomic sensors, and a novel software architecture for safely storing and processing such information, making crop monitoring and irrigation management easier. The proposed platform helps agronomists to optimize irrigation procedures through a usable web-based tool which allows them to elaborate irrigation plans and to evaluate their effectiveness over crops. The system has been deployed in a large number of representative crops, located along near 50,000 ha of the surface, during several phenological cycles. Results demonstrate that the system enables crop monitoring and irrigation optimization, and makes interaction between farmers and agronomists easier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stating that information and services are ubiquitous, means that they are available anywhere, anytime. The development of mobile-devices with wireless network-access capabilities, together with the decrease in network-traffic costs and the proliferation of free wireless hotspots, makes the use of mobile-devices, as Internet access tools, increasingly common and attractive. With novel forms of presenting information and to provide new ways to interact with consumers, new business strategies can be boosted, in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and m-commerce. This paper describes a different approach to the relationship between customers and business-providers, based on contextualization mechanisms located in commercial products, which in turn acts as a gateway to static tag-embedded information as well as web-based information and services. A wine integrated management system, called SIGPV, is presented as a proof-of-concept, enumerating some of possible major business and CRM benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Biomedical implantable devices in real-time telemetry applications offer many advantages to study and monitor physiologic parameters in human and animal bodies. As in power-constrained implantable devices, batteries and wires are two key issues that usually compromise their application. Inductive coupling is a well-established technology because it replaces simultaneously the wired connection and avoids the use of batteries. In stand-alone applications that requires total freedom of movements, this technology may present some constrains. On the other hand, very-low power electronics, advanced energy harvesting techniques and smaller implantable rechargeable batteries makes now possible the conception of fully autonomous implantable devices. This paper describes an activation circuit used to completely turn-off battery-powered implantable devices. In addition, it allows the reception of embedded commands, suitable for calibration and sensor selection purposes. Results from an experimental device to be used in a smart hip prosthesis telemetry system for loosening detection shows the usefulness of the proposed activation concept. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Spatial and temporal variability characterization in Precision Agriculture (PA) practices is often accomplished by proximity data gathering devices, which acquire data from a wide variety of sensors installed within the vicinity of crops. Proximity data acquisition usually depends on a hardware solution to which some sensors can be coupled, managed by a software that may (or may not) store, process and send acquired data to a back-end using some communication protocol. The sheer number of both proprietary and open hardware solutions, together with the diversity and characteristics of available sensors, is enough to deem the task of designing a data acquisition device complex. Factoring in the harsh operational context, the multiple DIY solutions presented by an active online community, available in-field power approaches and the different communication protocols, each proximity monitoring solution can be regarded as singular. Data acquisition devices should be increasingly flexible, not only by supporting a large number of heterogeneous sensors, but also by being able to resort to different communication protocols, depending on both the operational and functional contexts in which they are deployed. Furthermore, these small and unattended devices need to be sufficiently robust and cost-effective to allow greater in-field measurement granularity 365 days/year. This paper presents a low-cost, flexible and robust data acquisition device that can be deployed in different operational contexts, as it also supports three different communication technologies: IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee, LoRa/LoRaWAN and GRPS. Software and hardware features, suitable for using heat pulse methods to measure sap flow, leaf wetness sensors and others are embedded. Its power consumption is of only 83 μ A during sleep mode and the cost of the basic unit was kept below the EUR 100 limit. In-field continuous evaluation over the past three years prove that the proposed solution—SPWAS'21—is not only reliable but also represents a robust and low-cost data acquisition device capable of gathering different parameters of interest in PA practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sap flow measurements of trees are today the most common method to determine evapotranspiration at the tree and the forest/crop canopy level. They provide independent measurements for flux comparisons and model validation. The most common approach to measure the sap flow is based on intrusive solutions with heaters and thermal sensors. This sap flow sensor technology is not very reliable for more than one season crop; it is intrusive and not adequate for low diameter trunk trees. The non-invasive methods comprise mostly Radio-frequency (RF) technologies, typically using satellite or air-born sources. This system can monitor large fields but cannot measure sap levels of a single plant (precision agriculture). This article studies the hypothesis to use of RF signals attenuation principle to detect variations in the quantity of water present in a single plant. This article presents a well-defined experience to measure water content in leaves, by means of high gains RF antennas, spectrometer, and a robotic arm. Moreover, a similar concept is studied with an off-the-shelf radar solution—for the automotive industry—to detect changes in the water presence in a single plant and leaf. The conclusions indicate a novel potential application of this technology to precision agriculture as the experiments data is directly related to the sap flow variations in plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) is a non-destructive technique that has been successfully used to assess the body and carcass composition of farm species. This study aimed to predict intramuscular fat (IMF) and physicochemical traits in the longissimus thoracis et lumborum muscle (LM) of beef, using BIA. These traits were evaluated in LM samples of 52 crossbred heifer carcasses. The BIA was performed in LM, using a 50 Hz frequency high precision impedance converter system. A correlation analysis of the studied variables was performed. Then a stepwise with a k-folds cross validation procedure was used to modelling the prediction of IMF and physicochemical traits from BIA parameters (24.5% ≤ CV ≤ 47.3%). Wide variation was found for IMF and BIA parameters. In general, correlations of BIA parameters with IMF and physicochemical traits were moderate to high and were similar for all BIA parameters (−0.50 ≤ r ≤ 0.50 only for total pigments, a* and pH48). It was possible to predict IMF and physicochemical traits from BIA. The best fit explained 79.3% of the variation in IMF, while for physicochemical traits the best fits were for sarcomere length and shear force (64.4% and 60.5%, respectively). The results confirmed the potential of BIA for objective measurement of meat quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally farmers have used their perceptual sensorial systems to diagnose and monitor their crops health and needs. However, humans possess five basic perceptual systems with accuracy levels that can change from human to human which are largely dependent on the stress, experience, health and age. To overcome this problem, in the last decade, with the help of the emergence of smartphone technology, new agronomic applications were developed to reach better, cost-effective, more accurate and portable diagnosis systems. Conventional smartphones are equipped with several sensors that could be useful to support near real-time usual and advanced farming activities at a very low cost. Therefore, the development of agricultural applications based on smartphone devices has increased exponentially in the last years. However, the great potential offered by smartphone applications is still yet to be fully realized. Thus, this paper presents a literature review and an analysis of the characteristics of several mobile applications for use in smart/precision agriculture available on the market or developed at research level. This will contribute to provide to farmers an overview of the applications type that exist, what features they provide and a comparison between them. Also, this paper is an important resource to help researchers and applications developers to understand the limitations of existing tools and where new contributions can be performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequently, the vineyards in the Douro Region present multiple grape varieties per parcel and even per row. An automatic algorithm for grape variety identification as an integrated software component was proposed that can be applied, for example, to a robotic harvesting system. However, some issues and constraints in its development were highlighted, namely, the images captured in natural environment, low volume of images, high similarity of the images among different grape varieties, leaf senescence, and significant changes on the grapevine leaf and bunch images in the harvest seasons, mainly due to adverse climatic conditions, diseases, and the presence of pesticides. In this paper, the performance of the transfer learning and fine-tuning techniques based on AlexNet architecture were evaluated when applied to the identification of grape varieties. Two natural vineyard image datasets were captured in different geographical locations and harvest seasons. To generate different datasets for training and classification, some image processing methods, including a proposed four-corners-in-one image warping algorithm, were used. The experimental results, obtained from the application of an AlexNet-based transfer learning scheme and trained on the image dataset pre-processed through the four-corners-in-one method, achieved a test accuracy score of 77.30%. Applying this classifier model, an accuracy of 89.75% on the popular Flavia leaf dataset was reached. The results obtained by the proposed approach are promising and encouraging in helping Douro wine growers in the automatic task of identifying grape varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to characterize vineyard vegetation thorough multi-temporal monitoring using a commercial low-cost rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a consumer-grade red/green/blue (RGB) sensor. Ground-truth data and UAV-based imagery were acquired on nine distinct dates, covering the most significant vegetative growing cycle until harvesting season, over two selected vineyard plots. The acquired UAV-based imagery underwent photogrammetric processing resulting, per flight, in an orthophoto mosaic, used for vegetation estimation. Digital elevation models were used to compute crop surface models. By filtering vegetation within a given height-range, it was possible to separate grapevine vegetation from other vegetation present in a specific vineyard plot, enabling the estimation of grapevine area and volume. The results showed high accuracy in grapevine detection (94.40%) and low error in grapevine volume estimation (root mean square error of 0.13 m and correlation coefficient of 0.78 for height estimation). The accuracy assessment showed that the proposed method based on UAV-based RGB imagery is effective and has potential to become an operational technique. The proposed method also allows the estimation of grapevine areas that can potentially benefit from canopy management operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Vehicles rely on the efficiency of dampers to dissipate energy from the motion of vehicle body and wheels, maintaining the vehicle more stable, and improving the contact between tires and the road surface. To achieve an effective monitoring of dampers (or shock absorbers), two different methodologies, capable of assessing, under vehicle normal operation, the condition of the automotive dampers are presented. The proposed methodologies are based in acceleration, temperature and pressure sensing to determine the shock absorber condition, and are therefore suitable for future implementation in low cost fabrication technologies. The results shown that it is possible to have an effective monitoring device, installed in the damper body, capable of continuously determining shock absorber status, and therefore enabling real time diagnosis. Such a diagnosis system can reduce the number of vehicles riding with defective suspension systems and increase the overall vehicle safety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]