CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR 3D PLANT PHENOTYPING IN AGRICULTURE USING TERRESTRIAL LASERS SCANNERS

Abstract. Active sensing with LiDAR, and terrestrial laser scanners (TLS) in particular, are increasingly being used in plant phenotyping for assessing structural or 3D geometrical plant traits. Although these technologies provide the unprecedented possibility for remote, non-destructive, automatable, and efficient estimation of plant geometry, their deployment does not come without challenges. In this publication, we present a systematic overview of all challenges impacting TLS-based 3D plant phenotyping. We provide actionable recommendations for the end users of the technology, as well as the research questions and possible directions that can contribute the most to resolving these challenges. We specifically focus on TLSs, as we detected a lack in the existing literature dedicated to this sensing system providing a unique compromise between data quality and resolution vs. measurement efficiency and covered volume. The presented discussions are based on the literature review and our own experience in estimating the structural traits of sugar beet and wheat in plant phenotyping experiments.