The sustainable functioning of the transport system requires solving the problems of identifying and classifying road users in order to predict the likelihood of accidents and prevent abnormal or emergency situations. The emergence of unmanned vehicles on urban highways significantly increases the risks of such events. To improve road safety, intelligent transport systems, embedded computer vision systems, video surveillance systems, and photo radar systems are used. The main problem is the recognition and classification of objects and critical events in difficult weather conditions. For example, water drops, snow, dust, and dirt on camera lenses make images less accurate in object identification, license plate recognition, vehicle trajectory detection, etc. Part of the image is overlapped, distorted, or blurred. The article proposes a way to improve the accuracy of object identification by using the Canny operator to exclude the damaged areas of the image from consideration by capturing the clear parts of objects and ignoring the blurry ones. Only those parts of the image where this operator has detected the boundaries of the objects are subjected to further processing. To classify images by the remaining whole parts, we propose using a combined approach that includes the histogram-oriented gradient (HOG) method, a bag-of-visual-words (BoVW), and a back propagation neural network (BPNN). For the binary classification of the images of the damaged objects, this method showed a significant advantage over the classical method of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) (79 and 65% accuracies, respectively). The article also presents the results of a multiclass classification of the recognition objects on the basis of the damaged images, with an accuracy spread of 71 to 86%.

The article discusses the problem of detecting sick or mechanically damaged potatoes using machine learning methods. We proposed an algorithm and developed a system for the rapid detection of damaged tubers. The system can be installed on a conveyor belt in a vegetable store, and it consists of a laptop computer and an action camera, synchronized with a flashlight system. The algorithm consists of two phases. The first phase uses the Viola-Jones algorithm, applied to the filtered action camera image, so it aims to detect separate potato tubers on the conveyor belt. The second phase is the application of a method that we choose based on video capturing conditions. To isolate potatoes infected with certain types of diseases (dry rot, for example), we use the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT)—Support Vector Machine (SVM) method. In case of inconsistent or weak lighting, the histogram of oriented gradients (HOG)—Bag-of-Visual-Words (BOVW)—neural network (BPNN) method is used. Otherwise, Otsu’s threshold binarization—a convolutional neural network (CNN) method is used. The first phase’s result depends on the conveyor’s speed, the density of tubers on the conveyor, and the accuracy of the video system. With the optimal setting, the result reaches 97%. The second phase’s outcome depends on the method and varies from 80% to 97%. When evaluating the performance of the system, it was found that it allows to detect and classify up to 100 tubers in one second, which significantly exceeds the performance of most similar systems.

The article proposes a methodology for optimizing the process of irrigation of crops using a phytoindication system based on computer vision methods. We have proposed an algorithm and developed a system for obtaining a map of irrigation for maize in low latency mode. The system can be installed on a center pivot irrigation and consists of 8 IP cameras connected to a DVR connected to a laptop. The algorithm consists of three stages. Image preprocessing stage - applying an integrated excess green and excess red difference (ExGR) index. The classification stage is the application of the method that we choose depending on the system’s operating conditions. At the final stage, a neural network trained using the Resilient Propagation method is used, which determines the rate of watering of plants in the current sector of the location of the sprinkler. The selected methods of pretreatment and classification made it possible to achieve an accuracy of plant identification up to 93%, growth stages - up to 92% (with unconsolidated maize sowing and good lighting). System performance up to 100 plants in one second, which exceeds the performance of similar systems. The neural network showed an accuracy of 92% on the training set and 87% on the test set. Dynamic analysis of spatial and temporal variability leads to an increase in productivity and efficiency of water use. In addition, given the ubiquitous distribution of agribusiness management systems, this approach is quite simple to implement in the farm’s conditions.

Detecting sugar beetroot crops with mechanical damage using machine learning methods is necessary for fine-tuning beet harvester units. The Agrifac HEXX TRAXX harvester with an installed computer vision system was investigated. A video camera (24 fps) was installed above the turbine, which receives the dug-out beets after the digger and is connected to a single-board computer. At the preprocessing stage, static and insignificant image details were revealed. Canny edge detector and excess green minus excess red (ExGR) method were used. The identified areas were excluded from the image. The remaining areas were glued with similar areas of another image. As a result, the number of images entering the second stage of preprocessing was reduced by half. Then Otsu’s binarization was used. The main stage of image processing is divided into two sub-stages: detection and classification. The improved YOLOv4-tiny method was chosen for root crop detection using a single-board computer (SBC). This method allows processing up to 14 images of 416 × 416 pixels with 86% precision and 91% recall. To classify root crop damage, we considered two algorithms as candidates: 1. bag of visual words (BoVW) with a support vector machine (SVM) classifier using histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) and scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) descriptors; 2. convolutional neural networks (CNN). Under normal lighting conditions, CNN showed the best accuracy, which ranged from 97% to 100%, depending on the damage class. The implemented methods were used to detect and classify blurred images of sugar beetroots, which were previously rejected. For improved YOLOv4-tiny precision was 74% and recall was 70%. CNN classification accuracy ranged from 90% to 95% depending on the root crops damage class.