Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav)-Based Hyperspectral Imaging System For Precision Agriculture And Forest Management

Hyperspectral imaging is a powerful tool for remote sensing of vegetation and environment. Although unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly utilized as a new platform for remote sensing, a conventional push-broom spectrometer is not suitable for hyperspectral imaging with commercial-grade UAVs. This paper presents a hyperspectral imaging system equipped with a sequential two-dimensional spectral imager, which is more practical for UAV-based hyperspectral imaging. Liquid crystal tunable filter technology, which is also used for spaceborne imagers on microsatellites, is applied to the UAV-based hyperspectral imager for wavelength scanning in 460-780 nm. The system has a total weight of 1.5 kg, and it is designed to operate remotely with multirotor UAVs. In this paper, image processing and analysis of the acquired hyperspectral images are also described in detail with examples. This system can be widely used for UAV-based hyperspectral imaging, especially in precision agriculture and forest management.