Weed detection in precision agriculture: leveraging encoder-decoder models for semantic segmentation

Precision agriculture uses data gathered from various sources to improve agricultural yields and the effectiveness of crop management techniques like fertiliser application, irrigation management, and pesticide application. Reduced usage of agrochemicals is a key step towards more sustainable agriculture. Weed management robots which can perform tasks like selective sprinkling or mechanical weed elimination, contribute to this objective. A trustworthy crop/weed classification system that can accurately recognise and classify crops and weeds is required for these robots to function. In this paper, we explore various deep learning models for achieving reliable segmentation results in less training time. We classify every pixel of the images into different categories using semantic segmentation models. The models are based on an encoder-decoder architecture, where feature maps are extracted during encoding and spatial information is recovered during decoding. We examine the segmentation output on a beans dataset containing different weeds, which were collected under highly distinct environmental conditions, including cloudy, rainy, dawn, evening, full sun, and shadow.