The early detection and prevention of plant diseases that are an important cause of famine and food insecurity worldwide are very important for increasing agricultural product productivity. Not only the early detection of the plant disease but also the determination of its type play a critical role in determining the appropriate treatment. The fact that visual inspection, which is frequently used in determining plant disease and types, is tiring and prone to human error, necessitated the development of algorithms that can automatically classify plant disease with high accuracy and low computational cost. In this study, a new hybrid plant leaf disease classification model with high accuracy and low computational complexity, consisting of the wrapper approach, including the flower pollination algorithm (FPA) and support vector machine (SVM), and a convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier, is developed with a wrapper-based feature selection approach using metaheuristic optimization techniques. The features of the image dataset consisting of apple, grape, and tomato plants have been extracted by a two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (2D-DWT) using wavelet families such as biorthogonal, Coiflets, Daubechies, Fejer–Korovkin, and symlets. Features that keep classifier performance high for each family are selected by the wrapper approach, consisting of the population-based metaheuristics FPA and SVM. The performance of the proposed optimization algorithm is compared with the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Afterwards, the classification performance is obtained by using the lowest number of features that can keep the classification performance high for the CNN classifier. The CNN classifier with a single layer of classification without a feature extraction layer is used to minimize the complexity of the model and to deal with the model hyperparameter problem. The obtained model is embedded in the NVIDIA Jetson Nano developer kit on the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and real-time classification tests are performed on apple, grape, and tomato plants. The experimental results obtained show that the proposed model classifies the specified plant leaf diseases in real time with high accuracy. Moreover, it is concluded that the robust hybrid classification model, which is created by selecting the lowest number of features with the optimization algorithm with low computational complexity, can classify plant leaf diseases in real time with precision.

Diabetic retinopathy (DR), which is seen in approximately one-third of diabetes patients worldwide, leads to irreversible vision loss and even blindness if not diagnosed and treated in time. It is vital to limit the progression of DR disease in order to prevent the loss of vision in diabetic patients. It is therefore essential that DR disease is diagnosed at an early phase. Thanks to retinal screening at least twice a year, DR disease can be diagnosed in its early phases. However, due to the variations and complexity of DR, it is really difficult to determine the phase of DR disease in current clinical diagnoses. This paper presents a robust artificial intelligence (AI)-based model that can overcome nonlinear dynamics with low computational complexity and high classification accuracy using fundus images to determine the phase of DR disease. The proposed model consists of four stages, excluding the preprocessing stage. In the preprocessing stage, fractal analysis is performed to reveal the presence of chaos in the dataset consisting of 12,500 color fundus images. In the first stage, two-dimensional stationary wavelet transform (2D-SWT) is applied to the dataset consisting of color fundus images in order to prevent information loss in the images and to reveal their characteristic features. In the second stage, 96 features are extracted by applying statistical- and entropy-based feature functions to approximate, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal matrices of 2D-SWT. In the third stage, the features that keep the classifier performance high are selected by a chaotic-based wrapper approach consisting of the k-nearest neighbor (kNN) and chaotic particle swarm optimization algorithms (CPSO) to cope with both chaoticity and computational complexity in the fundus images. At the last stage, an AI-based classification model is created with the recurrent neural network-long short-term memory (RNN-LSTM) architecture by selecting the lowest number of feature sets that can keep the classification performance high. The performance of the DR disease classification model was tested on 2500 color fundus image data, which included five classes: no DR, mild non-proliferative DR (NPDR), moderate NPDR, severe NPDR, and proliferative DR (PDR). The robustness of the DR disease classification model was confirmed by the 10-fold cross-validation. In addition, the classification performance of the proposed model is compared with the support vector machine (SVM), which is one of the machine learning techniques. The results obtained show that the proposed model can overcome nonlinear dynamics in color fundus images with low computational complexity and is very effective and successful in precisely diagnosing all phases of DR disease.

Under harsh geographical conditions where manned flight is not possible, the ability of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to successfully carry out the payload hold–release mission by avoiding obstacles depends on the optimal path planning and tracking performance of the UAV. The ability of the UAV to plan and track the path with minimum energy and time consumption is possible by using the flight parameters. This study performs the optimum path planning and tracking using Harris hawk optimization (HHO)–grey wolf optimization (GWO), a hybrid metaheuristic optimization algorithm, to enable the UAV to actualize the payload hold–release mission avoiding obstacles. In the study, the hybrid HHO–GWO algorithm, which stands out with its avoidance of local minima and speed convergence, is used to successfully obtain the feasible and effective path. In addition, the effect of the mass change uncertainty of the UAV on optimal path planning and tracking performance is determined. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is tested by comparing it with the metaheuristic swarm optimization algorithms such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) and GWO. The experimental results obtained indicate that the proposed algorithm generates a fast and safe optimal path without becoming stuck with local minima, and the quadcopter tracks the generated path with minimum energy and time consumption.