The New Method of Fruit Tree Characteristics Acquisition Using Electromagnetic Tracking Instrument

To achieve informatization for Orchards and fruit trees and to obtain real-time tree characteristic parameters in orchard, data acquisition system of fruit tree characteristics has established by using electromagnetic tracking instrument, Fastrack and data acquisition software. The process of acquiring tree’s parameters and the method for acquiring tree characteristics using this system are discussed in detail. Finally, Outdoor measurement experiment was conducted on five 3-year-fruit trees in the experimental base. Five characteristics of fruit trees: tree height, the first main lateral branch height, angle between main branch and angle between main branch and a trunk, are acquired and compared with measurement results got from the traditional direct method. It shows that parameters of trees are basically the same: The difference of these two results is about 0.12cm ±0.06 cm. The relative error is less than 2mm and the mean difference in angle is no less than 1 degree. This means the proposed approach is feasible and has a high practical value.