Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)-Based Cotton Canopy Temperature Measurement System

Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) and sensor technology are offering great opportunity for precision agriculture and high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) system in recent days. In this study, a novel UAS system is proposed to measure cotton leaf temperature using a thermal sensor. Thermal images were acquired with significant overlap from UAS platform, and the images were calibrated by the sensor’s algorithm with parameters such as emissivity and air temperature. Ortho-mosaic image was generated by applying Structure from Motion (SfM) algorithm. Cotton canopy temperature acquired from UAS data was compared with ground measurement to validate the accuracy. The results showed that the integrated system of UAS and thermal sensor could be successfully used to measure cotton leaf temperature.