DETECTING AND COUNTING ORCHARD TREES ON UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAV)-BASED IMAGES USING ENTROPY AND NDVI FEATURES

Abstract. Multispectral images were acquired by a camera on board an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) over two apple orchards in Prince Edward Island in summer 2016. A method was developed to automatically detect rows of planted trees and trees in each row using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) image and its related entropy and variance images. The image-based tree position was then compared to the actual tree location measured in the field. We achieved an accuracy of 93% between the estimated and measured number of trees in both orchards.