The Nanjing Agricultural University (NAU) has just received its first two phenotyping systems. Supported by french agronomy institute (INRA) under a research partnership, NAU researchers have chosen to rely on the data acquisition system of Robopec, a division of iXblue.
Called Phenotiny, these systems are installed on lightweight wheeled frames manufactured locally. They include 3 LIDAR Sick LMS400, 2 Airphen multispectral cameras and 2 to 4 high resolution Sony cameras. Trigger sequences and synchronization of acquisitions are controlled with centimetric accuracy thanks to a dual antenna RTK GPS and advanced navigation filtering.
Acceptance tests and training have just taken place on the NAU site. A dozen of students and researchers have become familiar with the system by programming and executing themselves several measurement campaigns on experimental crops. To take advantage of the modular and configurable nature of Phenotiny, users have also learned how to set up and calibrate the machine after a hardware configuration change.
This export success confirms the ramp-up of phenotyping solutions. So far, Robopec holds a really high number of pending offers, and other orders are likely expected soon in the field of phenotyping, but also in the areas of advanced perception (multi-sensor fusion, detection and tracking at sea), and of naval and ground autonomous navigation (SLAM, dynamic path planning, obstacle avoidance, COLREGs).