Design and Test of the Seedling Cavitation and Lodging Monitoring System for the Rape Blanket Seedling Transplanter
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The subject is interesting for researchers working in the field of agricultural engineering. This article is well-written and structure. Abstract is informative, material and methods contain a sufficient data and will be useful for other researchers to repeat. Results and discussion are correlated and gave me direct idea about the points which the authors need to touch. However, the obtained results and limitations need to be discussed in details.Make the conclusions should follow the objective of this research as showing in the introduction.
Author Response
The subject is interesting for researchers working in the field of agricultural engineering. This article is well-written and structure. Abstract is informative, material and methods contain a sufficient data and will be useful for other researchers to repeat. Results and discussion are correlated and gave me direct idea about the points which the authors need to touch. However, the obtained results and limitations need to be discussed in details. Make the conclusions should follow the objective of this research as showing in the introduction.
Response: Thank you to the reviewers for their comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
In the rape seedling transplanting, the lodging and cavitation state of the rape blanket seedling transplanter affects rape production. To realize the real-time monitoring of the lodging and cavitation state of the rape blanket seedling transplanter, a set of real-time online monitoring system for cavitation and lodging based on machine vision was designed in this study. The organization is acceptable and the topic seems interesting. However, there are still some points which should be improved.
1、 There are so many typos and grammatical errors. The author needs to polish the article further.
2、 The size and format of variables should be uniform and standardized. And variables should be italicized. Besides, the figure format should be cited in a standard format and ascending order.
3、 In figure 3, the image processed by the ultra-green grayscale method should be shown. And you don’t speak about weeds which. Weeds are very important and can modify the results of segmentation.
4、 It would have been nice if this manuscript had also given the algorithm of the method proposed.
5、 What is new? What is the scientific impact of this work? What’s about the advantage for agriculture? This should be pointed out!
6、 In equations (2) and (4), why does the variable “L” have different values? The same to equations (3) and (5).
7、 Line 161, when you write “only the key frames of the image”, what do you mean or how do you get the key frames?
8、 For the machine operating in the field, mechanical vibrations can cause camera jitter. Will the camera jitter affect the detection result or the actual distance information acquisition?
9、 To better judge the performance of the proposed method in addition to the quality metrics in Table3, it would be helpful to the reader to also show some visualization of detection results of the proposed method.
Author Response
In the rape seedling transplanting, the lodging and cavitation state of the rape blanket seedling transplanter affects rape production. To realize the real-time monitoring of the lodging and cavitation state of the rape blanket seedling transplanter, a set of real-time online monitoring system for cavitation and lodging based on machine vision was designed in this study. The organization is acceptable and the topic seems interesting. However, there are still some points which should be improved.
1.There are so many typos and grammatical errors. The author needs to polish the article further.
Response: Typos and grammatical errors have been corrected and polished. We hope the writing is acceptable for publication now.
2.The size and format of variables should be uniform and standardized. And variables should be italicized. Besides, the figure format should be cited in a standard format and ascending order.
Response: The variables in this article have been modified to italic format as suggested.
3.In figure 3, the image processed by the ultra-green grayscale method should be shown. And you don’t speak about weeds which. Weeds are very important and can modify the results of segmentation.
Response: The machine in this paper is an integrated sowing transplanter, which will rotate the fields before planting the crops, and this operation has ploughed the weeds between the fields, so the fields show no weeds.
4、 It would have been nice if this manuscript had also given the algorithm of the method proposed.
Response: We experimentally compared several algorithms and found that the algorithm proposed in the paper works best and has the highest accuracy, so other algorithms are not listed in the paper.
5、 What is new? What is the scientific impact of this work? What’s about the advantage for agriculture? This should be pointed out!
Response: The scientific impact of this work and the advantage for agriculture were pointed out in the conclusion.
6、 In equations (2) and (4), why does the variable “L” have different values? The same to equations (3) and (5).
Response: the variable “L” in equations (2) and (4) indicates a different meaning. Bug fixes have been made.
7、 Line 161, when you write “only the key frames of the image”, what do you mean or how do you get the key frames?
Response: In this paper, a resolution of 640×480SUM4 is used for image acquisition, the exposure time is set to 5ms, and the maximum acquisition frame rate is 76 frames/sec. Therefore, three key frame images are selected at uniform intervals in 1 second for image stitching. We have added this section in this paper.
8、 For the machine operating in the field, mechanical vibrations can cause camera jitter. Will the camera jitter affect the detection result or the actual distance information acquisition?
Response: The camera jitter does affect the detection results and the acquisition of the actual distance information. In order to solve this problem, we use the range sensor to obtain the actual operating height for calibration. In this paper, the laser ranging sensor is used, which can obtain better calibration accuracy of seedling image height.
9、 To better judge the performance of the proposed method in addition to the quality metrics in Table3, it would be helpful to the reader to also show some visualization of detection results of the proposed method.
Response: Many thanks to the expert for a very good suggestion, which we will adopt in our subsequent paper.
Reviewer 3 Report
1. The aim of monitoring lodging and cavitation state should be presented in the abstract.
2. In the line 36，the sentence “The transplanting process was blocked, seedlings dropped, seedlings buried etc” should be more clear.
3. In the line 103, “Parts are as shown in figure 1.” What is the part refer to ?
4. The diagram of the monitoring system process should be presented in this manuscript.
5. What’s the value of the soil moisture and soil penetration in the field test?
6. The time-consuming of the system was obtained in this manuscript, but the method how do you get the time should be stated in detail.
7. The distance measuring sensor was mentioned in the Conclusion, but the parameters about the distance measuring sensor didn’t be found. Is it the ranging sensor?
8. What’s the advantages of the system in themanuscript? The results should be compared with other system or method.
9. The English in the manuscript must be improved, such as the grammar, sentence structure in the line 38, 48 etc.
Author Response
1.The aim of monitoring lodging and cavitation state should be presented in the abstract.
Response: lodging and cavitation state are key technical indicators for rape transplanters
2.In the line 36，the sentence “The transplanting process was blocked, seedlings dropped, seedlings buried etc” should be more clear.
Response: The sentence “The transplanting process was blocked, seedlings dropped, seedlings buried etc” has been modified as suggested.
3.In the line 103, “Parts are as shown in figure 1.” What is the part refer to ?
Response: The section shown in Figure 1 refers to seedling cavitation and lodging monitoring system. We have modified as suggested.
4.The diagram of the monitoring system process should be presented in this manuscript.
Response: The diagram of the monitoring system process has be presented in this manuscript as suggested.
5.What’s the value of the soil moisture and soil penetration in the field test?
Response: the soil moisture is 25.4% the previous crop was rice, the straw was crushed and returned to the field in full, and the stubble height was 15cm. we have added this section in this paper.
6.The time-consuming of the system was obtained in this manuscript, but the method how do you get the time should be stated in detail.
Response: The time-consuming of the system was obtained using the software system timing. we have added this section in this paper.
7.The distance measuring sensor was mentioned in the Conclusion, but the parameters about the distance measuring sensor didn’t be found. Is it the ranging sensor?
Response: The ranging sensor selected in this system is the Bexing TF-Luna laser radar module, and the specific parameters and listed in line 107-110 of this paper.
8.What’s the advantages of the system in themanuscript? The results should be compared with other system or method.
Response: Through the mutual real-time calibration of the pixels corresponding to the actual size, the problem of viewing angle changes caused by the ups and downs of the industrial camera during the transplanting process is solved, and the real-time judgment of the working condition of the machine is also realized. The system designed in this paper is specifically designed to meet the needs of rape blanket seedling transplanting lodging and cavitation monitoring, and no other system can achieve this function at present, so we only compared system test accuracy with manual actual test accuracy.
9.The English in the manuscript must be improved, such as the grammar, sentence structure in the line 38, 48 etc.
Response: Related sentence structures have been improved. We hope the writing is acceptable for publication now.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have revised their article based on the reviewers’ concerns. However, there are still some points which should be improved.
1. Please check English again since I have found some mistakes and errors. The author needs to polish the article further.
2. Page5, when you write “In this paper, a resolution of 640×480SUM4 is used for image acquisition, the exposure time is set to 5ms, and the maximum acquisition frame rate is 76 frames/sec. Therefore, three key frame images are selected at uniform intervals in 1 second for image stitching”. But the driving speed of the rape blanket seedling transplanter is not stable when operating in the field, and the frame rate is 76 frames/sec. How do you get the complete planting information by the mentioned three key frame images to detect accurately the seedling cavitation and lodging.
3. What is the variable “k” defined in equation (5).
4. To better show missing and lodging calculations of the proposed method, the authors should give a schematic demonstration of equations(2)、(3)、(4) and (5) in Figure 5.
Author Response
1.Please check English again since I have found some mistakes and errors.The author needs to polish the article further.
Response: Some mistakes and errors have been improved. We hope the writing is acceptable for publication now.
2.Page5, when you write “In this paper, a resolution of 640×480SUM4 is used for image acquisition, the exposure time is set to 5ms, and the maximum acquisition frame rate is 76 frames/sec. Therefore, three key frame images are selected at uniform intervals in 1 second for image stitching”. But the driving speed of the rape blanket seedling transplanter is not stable when operating in the field, and the frame rate is 76 frames/sec. How do you get the complete planting information by the mentioned three key frame images to detect accurately the seedling cavitation and lodging.
Response: The images taken during the travel of the machine are repeated, and the stitching process with all the images is time-consuming and requires high hardware for the system. According to Equation 1 in the paper, three images can meet the image stitching requirements and cover all the area that the machine travels, calculated according to the machine's forward speed and camera shooting area. The problem of up and down vibration of the machine, combined with the distance sensor to correct the image, to solve the impact of the camera distance from the ground changes.
3. What is the variable “k”defined in equation (5).
Response: The variable “k” in equations (5) and (2) indicates an identical meaning. Bug fixes have been made.
4.To better show missing and lodging calculations of the proposed method, the authors should give a schematic demonstration of equations(2)、(3)、(4) and (5) in Figure 5.
Response: We have given a schematic demonstration of equations(2)、(3)、(4) and (5) in Figure 5 as suggested.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
