An Embedded System for Aerial Image Processing from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper proposes solution capable to process aerial images from UAVs to identify failures in plantations and makes a comparison of the system running on light sized computers and low power computing platforms. An algorithm was developed based on watersheds using OpenCV library. The solution was embedded on X86 architecture (AlteraDE2i-150) and Intel Edison boards as well as on ARM architecture (Raspberry Pi 2). The results show that the proposed system is a cost-effective solution for the problem of fault identification in plantations, and can be embedded in UAVs for processing images in real time.