Deep learning-based target spraying control of weeds in wheat fields at tillering stage

In this study, a target spraying decision and hysteresis algorithm is designed in conjunction with deep learning, which is deployed on a testbed for validation. The overall scheme of the target spraying control system is first proposed. Then YOLOv5s is lightweighted and improved. Based on this, a target spraying decision and hysteresis algorithm is designed, so that the target spraying system can precisely control the solenoid valve and differentiate spraying according to the distribution of weeds in different areas, and at the same time, successfully solve the operation hysteresis problem between the hardware. Finally, the algorithm was deployed on a testbed and simulated weeds and simulated tillering wheat were selected for bench experiments. Experiments on a dataset of realistic scenarios show that the improved model reduces the GFLOPs (computational complexity) and size by 52.2% and 42.4%, respectively, with mAP and F1 of 91.4% and 85.3%, which is an improvement of 0.2% and 0.8%, respectively, compared to the original model. The results of bench experiments showed that the spraying rate under the speed intervals of 0.3-0.4m/s, 0.4-0.5m/s and 0.5-0.6m/s reached 99.8%, 98.2% and 95.7%, respectively. Therefore, the algorithm can provide excellent spraying accuracy performance for the target spraying system, thus laying a theoretical foundation for the practical application of target spraying.