JP2005237317A - Minute insect-catching apparatus and image processing counting method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a minute insect-catching apparatus and an image processing counting method capable of quickly and accurately grasping occurrence of various kinds of insects even if a person is not an expert, because expert knowledge is required in order to determine small insects by visual observation, though size and generation period of insects parasitized in farm products are all different and large insects can be determined by visual observation. <P>SOLUTION: The minute insect-catching apparatus is constituted of a fan installed in the vicinity of a generation part, a motor for driving the fan, a cell used as an electric source for the motor and a cartridge type adhesive sheet for blowing sucked air in order to research numbers of generation of insects parasitized or fried in farm products and the apparatus counts the generation amount. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for obtaining the cultivation guidelines for agricultural crops by examining the generation amounts of various insects called pests and beneficial insects parasitizing and flying in agricultural crops such as tea trees, fruit trees and vegetables.

In the agricultural technology field, conventional techniques for identifying the occurrence of pests with images include the following. Disease detection where normal crops are photographed and memorized first, then straddled on crops affected by diseases and pests, illnesses and pests are detected by the difference between normal and abnormal, and pesticide spraying is also performed A control machine (for example, Patent Document 1), a device that is attracted by a pheromone agent or a light, takes a picture with a CCD camera or a video camera, and an image is viewed by an administrator (for example, Patent Document 2) The adhesive sheet, which is a single sticky sheet hanging on a branch of a crop (mandarin orange) and collected naturally, is manually collected manually and photographed with a digital camera attached to an XY plotter. A system that counts thrips (for example, Non-Patent Documents 1, 2, and 3), a pest attracted with a pheromone agent, and a discriminating and counting system by image processing (for example, Non-Patent Document 4) and the surface of the earth Part The breathing machine was installed, an apparatus for image processing counted in the rolled pressure-sensitive adhesive sheet that operates automatically by blowing insects captured on the spot computer (e.g., Patent Document 3), and the like. None of these conventional techniques has been popularized for various reasons.
JP-A-6-424 JP 2001-45945 Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-189487 Shizuoka Prefecture Numazu Industrial Technology Center Research Report No.2 “Study on Development of High-speed Unmanned Counting Device for Controlled Pests (1st Report)” Shizuoka Prefecture Numazu Industrial Technology Center Research Report No.3 “Study on Development of High-speed Unmanned Counting Device for Controlled Pests (2nd Report)” Shizuoka Prefecture Numazu Industrial Technology Center research report No.4 “Study on the development of a high-speed unmanned counting device for difficult-to-control micro insect pests (3rd report)” 2003 Hokkaido Technical Laboratory Technical Support Result Casebook

  It is said that there are over 2,000 species of insects that infest crops, and that there are over 10,000 species, including natural enemy insects, etc., and their sizes and occurrence periods vary. Natural conditions are greatly involved in the timing of these occurrences. Large insects can be judged visually, but specialized knowledge is required to judge small insects visually. For example, the hatched larvae of the scallop scale insect, which is a difficult-to-control pest of tea trees, are as small as 0.2 mm in length and are counted visually using a microscope. In addition, citrus and tea tree pests, Chanoiro thrips, are as small as 0.8 mm in length and use a microscope. There are many similar types of such micro-insects, and it is difficult to judge attached insects unless you are an expert. For this reason, various attempts have been made to automatically measure a specific type as in the prior art.

  Agricultural crops are cultivated over a wide area, and it is necessary to provide many observation points due to differences in topography and temperature. Therefore, the apparatus is small, light, inexpensive, and easy to handle. The most advanced technology in the past is the device of Patent Document 3, where a suction-type machine is installed on the ground surface, insects are sprayed onto a roll-shaped adhesive sheet, and images are taken automatically and captured on the spot. Is a device that performs image processing counting with a computer, and all are operated unattended.

  However, the device of Patent Document 3 requires a series of expensive devices such as a roll-shaped adhesive sheet take-up, a photographing device and a computer, and it is difficult to install a large number of devices in a wide area. Inventing a simple device was a problem.

  In order to examine the number of insects that parasitize and fly on crops, the first means of the present invention sucks a fan installed near the generation site, a motor that drives the fan, a battery that serves as a power source for the motor, A micro-insect trapping device comprising a cartridge-type adhesive sheet that blows air and counting the amount of generation. The second means comprises a scanner for reading a cartridge type adhesive sheet with insects attached to the first means, a computer, and image processing software.

  According to a third means of the present invention, in order to examine the number of insects parasitizing and flying on the crop, air is sucked by using a battery as a drive source in the vicinity of the generation site, sprayed onto the cartridge type adhesive sheet, and the cartridge to which the insects are attached. An image processing counting method comprising: collecting an adhesive sheet, taking it into a computer as a digital image with a scanner, interpreting it with image processing software, and counting the amount of generation.

  The device of the present invention is a small, light, inexpensive, simple and convenient device, can be installed in large numbers, and can quickly and accurately grasp the generation of various insects without being an expert, and is highly efficient. It helps control and reduce the amount of agricultural chemicals applied, and it can be used for various types of micro insects and helps improve agricultural technology.

  The present invention is directed to insects that parasitize and fly over all crops such as tea trees, fruit trees, and vegetables. Here, tea trees are described as specific crops. FIG. 1 shows an installation example of the insect trapping device of the present invention. In the case of a tea tree stag beetle, as shown in FIG. 1, it is preferably provided in the vicinity of a branch where many female adults 11 in the tea tree 1 are seen.

  FIG. 2 is a perspective view of the apparatus of the present invention, in which a fan 22 is provided by a small motor 20 using four 1.5 volt AA batteries 21 as a power source. The cartridge type adhesive sheet 25 is sprayed. Blow-through windows 26 are provided on the left and right sides of the front surface of the cartridge type adhesive sheet 25 in order to improve air blow-through. The cartridge type adhesive sheet 25 is a slide type that can be easily inserted and removed. As the dry battery 21 of the power source, a rechargeable type using another battery, for example, a small solar battery can be considered.

  FIG. 3 is a perspective view of the apparatus of the present invention. The cartridge-type adhesive sheet 25 with minute insects collected is collected and digitalized by a scanner such as an image scanner 30 or a film scanner 31 to be used as a numerical value in a computer 32. Remember.

  The digital image stored in the computer 32 as a numerical value is subjected to a counting process for counting the number of target pests in the image by image analysis software in the computer 32. In this image analysis, collation is performed based on the preset five threshold values shown in FIG. 4 including luminance, saturation, hue, area, and circularity.

  A description will be given of an example in which the occurrence of larvae of stag beetles, which are difficult-to-control pests of tea trees, was observed. As shown in FIG. 1, the micro insect capturing apparatus 10 of the present embodiment is installed in the vicinity of the tea tree 1 infested with the scale insect. The stag beetle repeats hatching three times a year. Immediately after hatching, the larvae crawl on the bark and go into the bark. The appropriate time for spraying pesticides is when the bark is dredged. It is important to know this hatching peak for high-efficiency control. The micro-insect capturing apparatus 10 is as shown in FIG. 2 and is 90 mm long, 70 mm wide, 150 mm deep, and has a small and light weight of 160 g including the dry battery 21. I can do it. The fan 22 for sucking in the nearby air (in this embodiment, an axial fan is used) having a diameter of 55 mm, a rotation speed of 2,600 rpm, and an air volume of 0.05? / Min is used. The power source is set to 6 volts DC using four AA batteries 21 of 1.5 volts, and reaches the cartridge type adhesive sheet 25 through the rectifying plate 23 from the suction port. The wind tunnel 24 has a throttle shape to increase the wind speed. The cartridge-type pressure-sensitive adhesive sheet 25 to be sprayed was sandwiched between hollow portions of 20 mm in length and 35 mm in width within an outer frame of 50 mm in length and 50 mm in width, and was the same as the slide photo mount used in general photographs. Blow-through windows 26 were provided in the wind tunnel 24 on both sides of the blowing surface for air flow. As the power capacity, when four AA batteries 21 were used, the operable time was less than 10 days. To compensate for this, a charging function with a solar cell is also possible. The fan 22 may be a centrifugal blower type fan having a different form from the axial flow fan. Further, as shown in FIG. 9, the same performance can be expected with a cylindrical apparatus having a shape different from that of FIG.

  The collected cartridge type adhesive sheet 25 is converted into a digital image by an image scanner 30 or a film scanner 31 as shown in FIG. In this embodiment, an image scanner 30 is used. The digital image stored in the computer 32 as a numerical value is subjected to a counting process for counting the number of target pests in the image by image analysis software. This image analysis uses a preset threshold value, FIG.

Next, the five threshold values, luminance, saturation, hue, area, and circularity in FIG. 4 will be described. The number of pixels of one screen in the implemented image scanner 30 is 2,700,350 pixels. One pixel is composed of 256 gradations of RGB (red, green, blue). From the RGB value, the following luminance = Y, color difference signal 1 = C1, color difference signal 2 = C2, saturation = S, hue = H, area = A, circularity = E was calculated. The calculation method is obtained by the following formula and is a general method at present.
Y = 0.3R + 0.59G + 0.11B,
C1 = R−Y = 0.7R−0.59G−0.11B,
C2 = BY = −0.3R−0.59G + 0.89B,
S = SQRT (C1 × C1 + C2 × C2),
H = Tan-1 (C1 / C2),
A = value of how many pixels continuously exist within the threshold values of Y, S, and H,
E = circularity calculated from A and a circumference obtained by tracking the boundary within Y, S, and H thresholds with a perfect circle of 1.0.
The threshold is multiplied by 1000. The value calculated in this way was compared with the threshold value set in FIG. 4 to select whether or not it was a stag beetle.

  The measured values obtained in the above example are as shown in FIG. No is a sample number of the cartridge type adhesive sheet 25. The PC count is a value calculated by the personal computer. The visual count is obtained by enlarging the cartridge type adhesive sheet 25 under a stereomicroscope and counting by a human. FIG. 6 is a graph of FIG. It turns out that it counts with high precision.

  Next, the implemented image processing method will be described. The image A1 in FIG. 7 is an image captured by the computer 32 using the image scanner 30 in FIG. This is a picture of the size of 20 mm in length and 35 mm in width of one cartridge type adhesive sheet 25, which is 2,700,350 pixels. A counting process is performed to determine how many stag beetles adhere to this image of A1. A2 is an enlarged portion of A1 for visual observation, and 70 is the target larvae of the scale insect. 71 is garbage.

  B1 in FIG. 8 is an image in which all but the stag beetle in A1 are deleted with the threshold values in FIG. B2 is enlarged for visual observation, and it can be seen that 71 dust has been removed. Thus, the number of target insects in one image is finally counted. Although the example with a stag beetle has been described, it is possible to count not only the stag beetle but also various insects such as pests and beneficial insects by changing the threshold value in FIG.

The schematic diagram which installed the apparatus of the Example in the tea garden. The perspective view of the apparatus of an Example. The schematic diagram of the apparatus of an Example. The figure which showed the threshold value used for the image process. The figure which showed the implementation measurement value. The figure which carried out the implementation measurement value in the graph. An image captured by a computer using an image scanner. The figure which showed 1 screen in the middle of image processing. The perspective view of the apparatus of an Example.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Tea tree 10 Small insect capture device 11 Female adult insect of 12 scale insect scale 12 Support stand 20 Small motor 21 Dry battery 22 Fan 23 Current plate 24 Wind tunnel 25 Cartridge type adhesive sheet surface 26 Blow-through window 30 Image scanner 31 Film scanner 32 Computer 70 Caterpillar 71 garbage

Claims (3)

  In order to investigate the number of insects that parasitize and fly on crops, a fan installed near the generation site, a motor that drives the fan, a battery that powers the motor, and a cartridge-type adhesive sheet that blows inhaled air A micro-insect trapping device characterized by comprising and counting the amount of generation.   The micro insect trapping device according to claim 1, further comprising a scanner for reading the cartridge type adhesive sheet to which insects are attached, a computer, and image processing software.   In order to investigate the number of insects that parasitize and fly on crops, air is sucked into the vicinity of the site using a battery as a drive source, sprayed onto the cartridge-type adhesive sheet, and the cartridge-type adhesive sheet with the insects attached is collected and placed in the scanner. An image processing counting method characterized in that a digital image is taken into a computer, read by image processing software, and the amount of generation is counted.

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