COMPUTER VISION APPROACH FOR TILE DRAIN OUTFLOW RATE ESTIMATION

• Main Authors: Han, M. (Author), Peschel, J.M (Author), Young, S.N (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers 2023
• Subjects: Computer vision; Flow of water; Flow rate; Morphological transformations; Outflow detection; Outflow rate; Outlet flow; Outlet flows; Rate estimation; Real-time application; Software testing; Tile drains; Video capture; Video recording; Vision-based approaches; Water flows
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 This article presents a computer vision-based approach for monitoring water flow at outlet points of a tile drain system. The approach relies only on video capture of events at outlet points, thus a camera can be installed remotely and without contact with water. The algorithm detects, identifies, and tracks flows by motion, shape, and color features and measures flow rate based on a proposed model and two provided dimensions. The software was tested in a laboratory environment with three different target flow rate conditions: 0.312, 0.946, and 1.58 L/s (5, 15, and 25 gal/min). Flow rates reported by the computer vision approach are within 12% of the ground-truth flow rate baseline. The results of this work show that computer vision can be used as a reliable method for monitoring outlet flows from free-standing outlet structures under laboratory conditions. This work opens the possibility of applying computer vision techniques in tile drain monitoring from outlet points with mobile video recording devices in the field. © 2023 American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.