Self-supervised weed detection in vegetable crops using ground based hyperspectral imaging

Abstract

A critical step in treating or eradicating weed infestations amongst vegetable crops is the ability to accurately and reliably discriminate weeds from crops. In recent times, high spatial resolution hyperspectral imaging data from ground based platforms have shown particular promise in this application. Using spectral vegetation signatures to discriminate between crop and weed species has been demonstrated on several occasions in the literature over the past 15 years. A number of authors demonstrated successful per-pixel classification with accuracies of over 80%. However, the vast majority of the related literature uses supervised methods, where training datasets have been manually compiled. In practice, static training data can be particularly susceptible to temporal variability due to physiological or environmental change. A self-supervised training method that leverages prior knowledge about seeding patterns in vegetable fields has recently been introduced in the context of RGB imaging, allowing the classifier to continually update weed appearance models as conditions change. This paper combines and extends these methods to provide a self-supervised framework for hyperspectral crop/weed discrimination with prior knowledge of seeding patterns using an autonomous mobile ground vehicle. Experimental results in corn crop rows demonstrate the system's performance and limitations.