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ARS Home » Plains Area » Fort Collins, Colorado » Center for Agricultural Resources Research » Water Management and Systems Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #360482
Title: Application and prospect of agricultural UAV’s obstacle avoidance technology in China

Author
item WANG, LINLIN - South China Agricultural University
item LAN, YUBIN - South China Agricultural University
item ZHANG, YALI - South China Agricultural University
item Zhang, Huihui
item TAHIR, MUHAMMAD - University Of Arid Agriculture
item OU, SHICHAO - South China Agricultural University
item LIU, XIAOTAO - South China Agricultural University
item CHEN, PENGCHAO - South China Agricultural University

Submitted to: Sensors
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/30/2019
Publication Date: 2/3/2019
Citation: Wang, L., Lan, Y., Zhang, Y., Zhang, H., Tahir, M.N., Ou, S., Liu, X., Chen, P. 2019. Application and prospect of agricultural UAV’s obstacle avoidance technology in China. Sensors. 19(3):642. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030642.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030642

Interpretive Summary: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming a new force precision agricultural aviation in China. Those agricultural area where ground based machinery have difficulty in farming operation, UAVs have shown obvious advantages in applications. One of the inevitable trends in precision application with UAVs is to realize autonomous identification of obstacles and real-time obstacle avoidance (OA). However, the complexity of OA research increases with the complex farmland environment and changing obstacles. The paper introduced the development of agricultural UAV’s OA technology in China, presented about thirty comparative analysis of UAV OA technology and gave future research directions.

Technical Abstract: With steady progress of China’s agricultural modernization, the demand of agricultural machinery for production is widely growing. Agricultural UAVs are becoming a new force in the field of China precision agricultural aviation. Those agricultural area where ground based machinery have difficulty in farming operation, Agricultural UAVs have shown obvious advantages in farming application. With the development of precision agricultural aviation technology, one of the inevitable trends is to realize autonomous identification of obstacles and real-time obstacle avoidance (OA) for agricultural UAVs. However, the complex farmland environment and changing obstacles both increase the complexity of OA research. The objective of this paper is to introduce the development of agricultural UAV’s OA technology in China. And it classifies the farmland obstacles in two ways and puts forward the OA zones and related avoidance tactics, which helps to improve the safety of aviation operations. This paper presents the 30 comparative analysis of domestic application of agricultural UAV OA technology, features, hotspot and future research direction. The agricultural UAVs’ OA technology of China is still at an early development stage and many barriers need to be overcome.