Low-Cost Stereo Vision for Robust 3D Positioning of Thin Radiata Pine Branches in Autonomous Drone Pruning
Manual pruning of radiata pine, a species of major economic importance to New Zealand forestry, is hazardous, labour-intensive, and increasingly constrained by workforce shortages. Existing autonomous pruning platforms typically rely on expensive sensors such as LiDAR and are limited to thick branches, which restricts their wider adoption. This paper investigates whether a single low-cost stereo camera mounted on a drone can provide sufficiently accurate branch detection and three-dimensional positioning to support autonomous pruning of branches as thin as 10 mm, thereby removing the need for auxiliary depth sensors. The proposed pipeline comprises two stages: branch segmentation and dept...
| Authors | Yida Lin, Bing Xue, Mengjie Zhang et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CV |
| Published | 6 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 6 May 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.