A Study on Canopy Volume Measurement Model for Fruit Tree Application Based on LiDAR Point Cloud

Na Guo, Ning Xu (), Jianming Kang, Guohai Zhang, Qingshan Meng, Mengmeng Niu, Wenxuan Wu and Xingguo Zhang
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Na Guo: College of Agricultural Engineering and Food Science, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China
Ning Xu: College of Agricultural Engineering and Food Science, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China
Jianming Kang: Shandong Academy of Agricultural Machinery Sciences, Jinan 252100, China
Guohai Zhang: College of Agricultural Engineering and Food Science, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China
Qingshan Meng: Shandong Academy of Agricultural Machinery Sciences, Jinan 252100, China
Mengmeng Niu: Shandong Academy of Agricultural Machinery Sciences, Jinan 252100, China
Wenxuan Wu: Shandong Academy of Agricultural Machinery Sciences, Jinan 252100, China
Xingguo Zhang: Shandong Academy of Agricultural Machinery Sciences, Jinan 252100, China

Agriculture, 2025, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-23

Abstract: The accurate measurement of orchard canopy volume serves as a crucial foundation for wind regulation and dosage adjustments in precision orchard management. However, existing methods for measuring canopy volume fail to satisfy the high precision and real-time requirements necessary for accurate variable-rate applications in fruit orchards. To address these challenges, this study develops a canopy volume measurement model for orchard spraying using LiDAR point cloud data. In the domain of point cloud feature extraction, an improved Alpha Shape algorithm is proposed for extracting point cloud contours. This method improves the validity judgment for contour line segments, effectively reducing contour length errors on each 3D point cloud projection plane. Additionally, improvements to the mesh integral volume method incorporate the effects of canopy gaps in height difference calculations, significantly enhancing the accuracy of canopy volume estimation. For feature selection, a random forest-based recursive feature elimination method with cross-validation was employed to filter 10 features. Ultimately, five key features were retained for model training: the number of point clouds, the 2D point cloud contour along the X- and Z-projection directions, the 2D width in the Y-projection direction, and the 2D length in the Z-projection direction. During model construction, the study optimized the hyperparameters of partial least squares regression (PLSR), backpropagation (BP) neural networks, and gradient boosting decision trees (GBDT) to build canopy volume measurement models tailored to the dataset. Experimental results indicate that the PLSR model outperformed other approaches, achieving optimal performance with three principal components. The resulting canopy volume measurement model achieved an R 2 of 0.9742, an RMSE of 0.1879, and an MAE of 0.1161. These results demonstrate that the PLSR model exhibits strong generalization ability, minimal prediction bias, and low average prediction error, offering a valuable reference for precision control of canopy spraying in orchards.

Keywords: precision variable application to fruit trees; point cloud features; canopy volume; machine learning models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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