WEED DETECTION BY MACHINE VISION AND ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK

A machine vision system using charge coupled device(CCD) camera for the weed detection in a radish farm was developed. Shape features were analyzed with the binary images obtained from color images of radish and weeds. Aspect, Elongation and PTB were selected as significant variables for discriminant models using the STEPDISC option. The selected variables were used in the DISCRIM procedure to compute a discriminant function for classifying images into one of the two classes. Using discriminant analysis, the successful recognition rate was 92% for radish and 98% for weeds. To recognize radish and weeds more effectively than the discriminant analysis, an artificial neural network(ANN) was used. The developed ANN model distinguished the radish from the weeds with 100%. The performance of ANNs was improved to prevent overfitting and to generalize well using a regularization method. The successful recognition rate in the farms was 93.3% for radish and 93.8% for weeds. As a whole, the machine vision system using CCD camera with the artificial neural network was useful to detect weeds in the radish farms.