Communications of the ACM
With Google Glass App Developed at cla, Scientists Can Analyze Plants' Health in Seconds
Researchers have developed an application for Google Glass that can quickly analyze the health of a plant without damaging it.
Credit: UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers have developed a Google Glass application that enables the wearer to quickly analyze the health of a plant without damaging it.
The app analyzes the concentration of chlorophyll, which indicates water, soil, and air quality.
Conventional methods for measuring chlorophyll concentration involve removing some of the plant's leaves, dissolving them in a chemical solvent, and then performing the chemical analysis. With the new Google Glass app, leaves are examined and then left functional and intact.
The system relies on an image captured by the Google Glass camera to measure the chlorophyll's light absorption in the green part of the optical spectrum. The system also has a handheld illuminator unit that can be produced using three-dimensional printing. The user controls the device with the Google Glass touch control pad or with the voice command feature. The system photographs the leaf and wirelessly sends an enhanced image to a remote server, which processes the data from the image and sends back a chlorophyll concentration reading in less than 10 seconds.
"This will allow a scientist to get readings walking from plant to plant in a field of crops, or look at many different plants in a drought-plagued area and accumulate plant health data very quickly," says UCLA professor Aydogan Ozcan.
From UCLA Newsroom (CA)
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