High Altitude Remote Sensing for Agricultural Applications

High altitude pseudosatellite (HAPS) can fill the gap between satellites and drones by providing continuous, automated, and very high resolution imagery of crops, and can operate autonomously, potentially providing the ideal imaging platform for agricultural remote sensing. 

The Problem

Most sectors of agriculture have found consistent value in remote sensing imagery of different types.    

However, the end users consistently complain about the critical gap between satellite and airborne sensing.  Satellites fail to provide frequent and high resolution imagery, due to the high costs and limited revisit rates.  Drone and airborne imaging, while providing much richer data on crops, are difficult to justify since they must be piloted and typically cover small regions, usually only once or twice in a growing season.   

Our Solution

High altitude pseudosatellite (HAPS) can fill the gap between satellites and drones by providing continuous, automated, and very high resolution imagery of crops, and can operate autonomously, potentially providing the ideal imaging platform for agricultural remote sensing.     

We will link the agricultural knowledge and research base of CSIRO to the raw capabilities of the emerging HAPS platforms by demonstrating remote sensing over a range of crop types in the course of this project.    

A custom-built imaging system, based on prototype systems we have already built, will be used to capture high resolution hyperspectral images of crop regions.  The flights will be planned together with agriculture research groups in CSIRO to target growing regions of interest, and specifically locations where the crops are well understood and studied in other work.  

Collaborators

This project is lead by Stephen Gensemer (MAN) in collaboration with Mickey Wang (MAN) and Giacomo Betti (A&F).