What is Remote Sensing?

Oct 21 | 11:01 a.m. | by iRadar News

Remote sensing is the data acquisition of information about the feature on earth. It is responsible for interpreting the data from a distance, using sensors, not in physical contact with the object. The information about things on earth, including on the surface and in the atmosphere and oceans, can be acquired by satellite or aircraft-based sensor technologies in digital form.

Remote sensing usually detects and measures electromagnetic energy, including visible and non-visible radiation between interaction surface materials and the atmosphere. Visible and NIR imagery is available from many sensors at different spatial resolutions.

Remote sensing benefit is not only limited to ground deformation monitoring but also can be used in detecting disease in the plant. The recent development on the usage of UAV has become another alternative of remote sensing for disease detection. UAV is a valuable means to monitor crop growth parameters such as biomass, leaf area index (LAI), and cholorophyll content can be measured with different sensors.

Multispectral (MS) and hyperspectral (HS) cameras have been widely used to monitor plant growth and biochemical indicators for many options of vegetation indices.

This is linked to the UAV flying below the cloud and the information can be acquired in real-time. UAV's equipped with a visible band and multispectral scanning camera can provide sufficient information for analyzing crop growth, health status, maturity and morphology.

In Malaysia, the adaptation of UAV technology for oil palm involves integrating vision sensors, machine vision algorithms, and control systems for monitoring pests using a thermal camera with a high-resolution optical image of cholorophyll and nutrient content from multispectral and hyperspectral UAV acquired images.