High-precision extraction method for maize planting information based on UAV RGB images

Ultra-high-resolution aerial images obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have widely been used to extract crop planting information in recent years. However, some high-resolution multispectral or hyperspectral images were usually costly and time-consuming for data processing. Therefore, it is very necessary to effectively use easily accessible and low-cost high-resolution RGB images, particularly to eliminate the common noises (e.g., shadows and bare land) for a better extraction accuracy of crop planting. In this study, a high-precision extraction method was proposed to obtain the maize planting information using 1.8 cm resolution UAV aerial orthophotos (i.e., RGB images). The experimental maize farm was located in Southeast Africa, where images were taken at noon during the maize growing season. The classification features were also selected from the aspects of the spectrum, color space, and image texture. Then, five types of classification were selected to extract maize planting information, including Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree (DT), and Random Forest (RF) algorithms). Firstly, an object-oriented interpreting platform (eCognition9.0 software) was selected to calculate the space transform of Hue, Saturation, and Intensity (HSI) color, eight types of RGB texture, and five vegetation indices, including the normalized green-red difference index, red-green ratio index, vegetation color verification index, visible-band difference vegetation index, and excess green vegetation index. Then, three types of feature space were constructed: 1) The first feature space was composed of three sub-feature spaces, i.e., vegetation indices, HSI color space features, and RGB image texture features; 2) The second feature space was composed of four sub-feature spaces, where three types of features were combined (i.e., vegetation indices, HSI color space, and RGB image texture) in pairs or total; 3) The third feature space was composed of the most optimal factors, where the dimension reduction was performed on the combination of all three types of features using RF. Subsequently, the RGB images were classified into three land-use types, including maize, bare land, and shadow. Bayes, KNN, SVM, DT, and RFs models were finally selected for the supervised classification with error matrix. The results showed that the optimal classification accuracy was obtained using neither a single feature nor all three types of features in total. More importantly, a combination of features was usually achieved higher accuracy than that of a single feature. Specifically, the best choice was the combination of HSI color and RGB image texture features using the RF, particularly with the total highest accuracy of 86.2% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.793. Additionally, the dimension reduction of features using RF models was neither significantly improved nor reduced classification accuracy (except for the SVM). However, the factors retained from the feature dimension reduction were easily explained suitable for the actual background and meaning. Furthermore, both classification efficiency and stability were improved greatly during this time. The finding can provide a specific solution for the high-precision extraction of crop planting information using UAV RGB images. © 2021, Editorial Department of the Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All right reserved.