Computer Vision for Timber Harvesting

The goal of this thesis is to investigate computer vision methods for timber harvesting operations. The background for developing computer vision for timber harvesting is to document origin of timber and to collect qualitative and quantitative parameters concerning the timber for efficient harvest planning.

The investigations in this thesis is done as initial work on a planning and logistic system for timber harvesting called logTracker. In this thesis we have focused on three methods for the logTracker project, which includes image segmentation, image classification, and image retrieval. Segmentation is to partition an image based on image characteristics and in our study we have focused on image texture.

Our segmentation method is inspired by iterative function systems and contractive maps, which makes the basis for both our texture characterization and our method for obtaining the image segments. The purpose of image segmentation is to make the basis for more advanced computer vision methods like object recognition and classification.

Our second method concerns image classification and we present a method where we classify small timber samples to tree species based on Active Appearance Models and texture characteristics. The last method is image retrieval based on the so called "bag of visual words" procedure. An image is characterized as a distribution of local image descriptors, which is the basis for effective image search.

These methods are described and discussed in relation to the logTracker project and ideas for further development of the system is provided. Building a complete logTracker system is a very demanding task and the conclusion is that it is important to focus on the elements that can bring most value to timber harvest planning.

Besides contributing to the development of the logTracker system the described methods have a general applicability making them useful for many other computer vision problems.