Mapping almond orchard canopy volume, flowers, fruit and yield using lidar and vision sensors

This paper present a mobile terrestrial scanning system for almond orchards, that is able to efficiently map flower and fruit distributions and to estimate and predict yield for individual trees. A mobile robotic ground vehicle scans the orchard while logging data from on-board lidar and camera sensors. An automated software pipeline processes the data offline, to produce a 3D map of the orchard and to automatically detect each tree within that map, including correct associations for the same trees seen on prior occasions. Colour images are also associated to each tree, leading to a database of images and canopy models, at different times throughout the season and spanning multiple years. A canopy volume measure is derived from the 3D models, and classification is performed on the images to estimate flower and fruit density. These measures were compared to individual tree harvest weights to assess the relationship to yield. A block of approximately 580 trees was scanned at peak bloom, fruit-set and just before harvest for two subsequent years, with up to 50 trees individually harvested for comparison. Lidar canopy volume had the strongest linear relationship to yield with R2=0.77 for 39 tree samples spanning two years. An additional experiment was performed using hand-held photography and image processing to measure fruit density, which exhibited similar performance (R2=0.71). Flower density measurements were not strongly related to yield, however, the maps show clear differentiation between almond varieties and may be useful for other studies.