Residual-capsule networks with threshold convolution for segmentation of wheat plantation rows in UAV images

The early growth process of wheat is vulnerable to various factors, and poor growth leads to vacancies in the planting row. Therefore, the wheat images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are essential for monitoring the growth of wheat and preventing diseases and insect pests. This paper uses wheat images captured by UAV as a dataset, and propose a novel residual-capsule network with threshold convolution (RCTC) for segmentation of wheat plantation rows. The network is achieved by replacing the AveragePooling of the improved ResNet34 with Capsule. Since the capsule network represents the features by vectors, it can explain the direction of features and the relative positions between features. Therefore, deeper feature information can be extracted. In addition, to reduce redundant features and enhance effective features, a new threshold convolution is also proposed. Experiments on the wheat field dataset show that our proposed algorithm can effectively segment the wheat plantation rows images collected by UAV, and is superior to some existing well-known algorithms, and can provide scientific support and reference for the decision-making process of smart agriculture.