Using GeoMedia Objects to Develop a User-friendly GIS/GPS-based System for Field Sampling Tasks

The generation of human-friendly GIS/GPS interfaces is an open field aiming at the development of tools that allow non-expert users to reap maximum profit from the integration of GIS and GPS technologies. This project uses GeoMedia objects to develop an integrated system for both planning field-sampling tasks and for GPS guided navigating. All field properties are recorded in a spatial database. The system is composed of two software packages. First allows users to generate detailed sampling plans: maps, properties, and specific data acquisition processes. The second package uses DGPS to guide the user along the course previously defined, and controls data acquisition at each node of the defined grid. The data acquisition stage of the proposed system can be extremely useful in many domains, in spite of being specifically designed for Precision Agriculture. The current work is part of a research project with the goal of developing a decision-making system based on the generation of weed-control risk maps. In this project, emphasis will be placed on both data collection and data postprocessing techniques to generate accurate maps. This presentation covers the software developed for the data collection stage.