Use of Open Source Software in multispectral drone imagery registration for agriculture

Abstract

Drones or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) are very useful for image acquisition. However, all the images acquired during a flight must be combined in order to create valuable information about a terrain or crop. There are many programs that combine images (image registration), each one with different properties (performance, precision, price, etc.). In this project some Open Source programs were analyzed in order to define the best software for Ecuadorian small and medium-sized farmers. The results obtained could be of interest for software developers since they may modify and integrate the programs into a simpler workflow. Additionally, it allows to reduce costs since no license payment are needed, which may motive small and medium-sized farmers. A public repository has been created as part of the results of this project, which includes code for pre-processing multispectral images and code for creating RGB, CIR and NDVI fused maps.