Showing papers in "Biosystems Engineering in 2009"

TL;DR: An image-processing based method that identifies the visual symptoms of plant diseases, from an analysis of coloured images, showed that the developed algorithm was able to identify a diseased region even when that region was represented by a wide range of intensities.

TL;DR: A thermal image and a visible image of an orange canopy scene were fused to improve fruit detection and showed that both image fusion methods improved fruit detection when compared to using the thermal image alone.

TL;DR: In this paper, the specific energy required to extrude the compact was measured; this will closely emulate the specific energies required to overcome the friction between the ground straw and die, as opposed to the process that occurs in a commercial operation where compacts are formed due to back-pressure effect in the die.

TL;DR: In this paper, the use of a low-cost tractor-mounted scanning Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system for capable of making non-destructive recordings of tree-row structure in orchards and vineyards is described.

TL;DR: A dedicated classification of AFO is devised and tailored to a conceptual application of the VRP within the domain of agricultural field logistics, to provide for the enhanced management of conventional machinery systems, as well as, the mission and route-planning aspects of the high level control of emerging field robots.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of using different binding agents in combination with hemp shives and fibres in Lime-Hemp Concrete (LHC) building material was examined, and the feasibility of using the entire fragmented hemp stalk in an LHC, and to determine some important material properties such as compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, water sorption and frost resistance.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effectiveness of various microwave-convective drying treatments were compared to convective air drying and commercial belt drying to establish the most favorable drying condition in terms of drying kinetics and dried product quality.

TL;DR: The performance of a hybrid methodology combining feed forward CNN, fuzzy logic and genetic algorithm to forecast one-day ahead daily water demands at irrigation districts considering that only flows in previous days are available for the calibration of the models were analysed.

TL;DR: In this article, the concentrations of CH 4, N 2 O, NH 3 and CO 2 were measured in a naturally-ventilated dairy cattle building using a photoacoustic multi-gas analyser 1412 and a multiplexer 1309 (Lumasense Technologies SA, Ballerup, Denmark).

TL;DR: In this article, the evaporation times and the maximum coverage areas of single droplets (246, 343, 575, 762, and 886 μm) on hairy and waxy geranium leaf surfaces were determined under controlled conditions.

TL;DR: In this article, the feasibility of deficit irrigation of maize, wheat and sunflower through an analysis of the economic water productivity (EWP) was evaluated. But the authors focused on selected sprinkler-irrigated fields in Vigia Irrigation District, Southern Portugal.

TL;DR: In this paper, a wireless three-dimensional accelerometer system for measuring gait features in dairy cows has been designed and constructed, and four accelerometers were fitted to each limb of the cows proximal to the fetlock joints.

TL;DR: In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to investigate the natural ventilation of a climatic livestock building under different wind incidences (WIs) for three different inlet opening areas.

TL;DR: In this paper, the feasibility of using two types of Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) sensor, and different methods of online data-processing for estimating crop density in front of a combine harvester, has been investigated.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors compared the accuracy of tracer gas measurements with an accurate measurement of the ventilation rate in a laboratory test installation and found that the errors in the measurements inside the ventilated airspace can rise to 86% of the actual ventilation rate.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the cocoa drying kinetics and compared the quality of the dried beans produced from sun and artificial hot air drying, and found significant differences in quality assessment.

TL;DR: A computer vision system that was developed for the recognition and classification of the most common external defects in citrus, which combines spectral information about the defects with morphological estimations of them in order to classify the fruits in categories.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of steam explosion pretreatment, process (die) temperature, feedstock particle size, and moisture content was evaluated on the physical quality of pellets produced from poplar wood and wheat straw.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors used Support Vector Machines (SVM) to simulate runoff and sediment yield from watersheds and found that SVM provided significant improvement in training, calibration and validation as compared to ANN.

TL;DR: The best classification results under 10-fold cross-validation test were 4.57% and 5.95% using PCALC and SVM, indicating that the local region detector based insect classification method could be an effective way for insect identification and classification.

TL;DR: In this paper, a wavelet texture analysis was used for classification of eight Western Canadian wheat classes using near infrared hyperspectral imaging of bulk samples using Daubechies-4 wavelets.

TL;DR: In this article, a mathematical model based on the logistic growth model was developed to describe the change in concentration of urea with release time in given volumes of water, and a damping coefficient related to the rate of mass transfer in the hydrogel was introduced to modify the instantaneous release rate.

TL;DR: In this paper, a constitutive model was developed for predicting and characterising the compression behaviors of corn stover and switchgrass grinds, which characterised the biomass as an elasto-visco-plastic solid through five model parameters.

TL;DR: In this paper, the potential of soft X-ray imaging to detect fungal infection in wheat was investigated and a total of 34 image features (maximum, minimum, mean, median, variance, standard deviation, and 28 grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) features) were extracted and given as input to statistical discriminant classifiers (linear, quadratic, and Mahalanobis) and back-propagation neural network (BPNN) classifier.

TL;DR: The effect of acidification on microbial activity was investigated and oxygen consumption rate, methanogenesis and sulphate reduction were all reduced by more than 98% in the stored acidified slurry compared to untreated slurry.

TL;DR: In this paper, wind tunnel measurements were used to measure airborne and fallout spray volumes for 10 different spray nozzles, and drift potential reduction percentages (DPRPs), expressing the reduction of the drift potential compared with the reference spraying, were calculated using the following three different approaches: DPRP V1 was calculated based on calculating the first moment of the airborne spray profile.

TL;DR: Toride et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the validity of first-and zero-order reactions for a laboratory-scale bioreactor, and to estimate flow and transport parameters for a lab-scale Bioreactor.

TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of different volumetric ratios of wastewater sludge to bulking agent on the performance of full-scale composting were studied in an uncovered plant using windrow composting with weekly turning.

TL;DR: In this article, a semi-arranged demand model, where hydrants are enabled to irrigate in homogeneous groups according to their hydraulic characteristics, is proposed to optimise energy consumption in these types of networks.

TL;DR: In this paper, a method based on photogrammetric tools has been developed for the generation of automatic digital elevation models (DEMs) in agricultural soils, and is compared with a method using very accurate off-the-shelf three-dimensional (3D) laser scanners.