A MONOCULAR CAMERA-BASED ALGORITHM FOR SUGAR BEET CROP ROW EXTRACTION

ABSTRACT In order to realise automatic row alignment for sugar beet harvesting, and to improve the efficiency of sugar beet combine harvesters, it is essential to be able to detect the positions of sugar beet rows. In this paper, we consider beet harvesting as a scenario, and an extraction algorithm for beet crop rows is proposed based on videos of beets collected with a monocular camera. We focus on the characteristics of the root and stem features, which are relatively difficult to distinguish from the surrounding environment after cutting the tops and beating the leaves of sugar beet, and a crop row extraction algorithm is designed in which threshold segmentation is carried out based on histogram equalisation and MM-Filter (median filtering and minimum area filtering) is applied to remove noise. The proposed algorithm retains more complete feature information and has better denoising effect than the traditional algorithm, and the processing time is only 11.751 ms, a value 6.9% lower than for the alternative approach. Our algorithm is feasible in terms of recognition and extraction, and can provide a theoretical basis for the construction of an automatic row-to-row control system for a sugar beet combine harvester. It can also provide technical support for the design of an automatic sugar beet combine harvester.