‘Pot-Buster’ Camera Identifies Plants Based on Color Sensors
Finding a four-leaf clover may be a sign of luck, but detecting a marijuana crop may hash out to be big business for one San Diego tech company.
Orincon Corp. has co-developed a “pot-buster” camera that can detect marijuana plants from 5,000 feet in the air and from several hundred yards on the ground. The system, which uses Orincon’s hyperspectral sensor technology, is expected to be tested this summer by the West Virginia State Police. About 40 percent of the nation’s marijuana plants grow in West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Rancho Bernardo-based Surface Optics Corp. is developing the hardware for the camera.
The hyperspectral sensor system works by breaking portions of the optical spectrum into as many as 30 unique colors at a rate of 30 times per second. The camera can even differentiate a marijuana plant from hemp, a legal plant used to make clothing, paper and other consumer products.
“It’s really an imaging system with some pretty nifty software,” said Art Garner, Orincon’s chief operating officer. “It actually goes in and looks at the different shades of the colors. Out of those shades you could pull out the shades you can’t see with the human eye.”
Currently, marijuana crops are detected through visual walk-throughs or fly-bys.
Garner said the pot-buster camera, which will cost between $8,000 and $12,000, will allow a more efficient, cost-effective and rapid way of finding the illegal plants.
The camera is used by hand, but the plan is to eventually mount it onto a surveillance aircraft.
This type of technology has been used for years via satellite for looking at the health of crops and the health of the oceans. Current satellite technology provides information in near real-time.
“The nice thing about this technology is it’s real-time,” David Walker, senior principal engineer for Orincon in Alexandria, Va., said about the “pot-buster” camera.
Walker noted the camera is still in the early stages of development. He said Orincon officials hope to receive federal funds to further enhance and study the technology.
“I think this has enormous agricultural uses,” Walker said.
Last year, the technology was tested in an acid mine draining site in Pennsylvania.
“We could see where the acid mine drain water was mixing with the stream water,” Walker said.
Other possible uses for the hyperspectral sensor camera include detecting oil spills and opium poppy fields.
Garner said Orincon officials plan to talk to state officials in Hawaii this summer about using the technology.
The “pot-buster” camera was developed from a similar technology Surface Optics was building for the U.S. Army. Garner said the camera technology is a good example of tech transfer.
“What you’re seeing is an awful lot of techniques that were developed for defense customers , data fusion, neural networks , that can be applied to things like drug discovery and financial services,” he said.
Orincon, created in 1973, began as a defense contractor, mainly doing signal processing and submarine detection and tracking.
“What happened in the early 1990s is we had to think about taking the technology and applying it to a wider set of customers,” Garner said.
In its quest to find more commercial customers, Orincon is also promoting commercial use of its Ground Safety Tracking and Reporting System (GSTARS). GSTARS, based on inductive loop sensors, was born out of Orincon’s work with the U.S. Department of Transportation to monitor traffic on the highways and regulate traffic lights.
Controllers at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., are evaluating the software, which also tracks and classifies aircraft and ground vehicles on airport surfaces. Orincon also plans to market GSTARS to international commercial airports.
Garner said there is also great opportunity to apply the company’s remote sensing technology to agricultural uses like detecting marijuana plants. Although similar technologies exist, Garner said there is little competition right now in this niche market.
“There aren’t a lot of IT companies that take these algorithms and apply these types of experiments,” he said. “But I think we’re going to find some people in (this market) pretty fast.”
Garner said the “pot-buster” camera is not just a “widget.”
“We’re not in this to sell cameras; we’re in this to provide a technical solution,” Garner said. “We’re looking to prove the technology. We’re about solving really complex problems.”
