A Deep Learning-Based System for Monitoring the Number and Height Growth Rates of Moso Bamboo Shoots

The number and growth of new shoots are very important information for bamboo forest cultivation and management. At present, there is no real-time, efficient and accurate monitoring method. In this study, a fixed webcam was applied for image capture, optimized YOLOv4 was used to model the detection of moso bamboo shoots, and a strategy of sorting and screening was proposed to track each moso bamboo shoot. The change in the number and height of moso bamboo shoots was obtained according to the number and height of detection boxes. The experimental results show that the system can remotely and automatically obtain the number of moso bamboo shoots and the pixel height of each bamboo shoot at any given time. The average relative error and variance in the number of moso bamboo shoots were 1.28% and 0.016%, respectively, and those for the corresponding pixel height results were −0.39% and 0.02%. This system can be applied to a series of monitoring purposes, such as the daily or weekly growth rate of moso bamboo shoots at monitoring stations and trends in the height of selected bamboo shoots.