Drones for environmental protection: Successful monitoring of fruit tree orchard stocks

A Heidelberg University of Education research drone circles again and again over the orchard meadows of the Bad-Schönborn community: Within the framework of the research project for “recording and assessing the meadow orchard and providing sponsorship,” which is supported by the Audi Environmental Foundation, the participants have been able to make significant progress in automated, digital classification and assessment of fruit tree stocks: The accuracy of the software in recognizing the tree species has been increased to around 90 percent and information about the vitality of the stock has been derived. The next step is to record and analyze the entire orchard area. This should start in autumn. The aim is to continuously improve the control of the software tools so that they can determine tree types even more accurately and determine the state of health of the trees. Based on these results, tailor-made measures for the protection and maintenance of the stocks are to be derived.

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