Table 3.

Specifications and applications of typical UAV-deployed sensors.

Type	Model	Weight (g)	Spectral bands	Wavelength range	Applications	Advantages	Disadvantages	References
Digital camera	Sony DSC-QX100	179	Red, Green, Blue	–	Leaf color, plant height, lodging, canopy cover, fraction of intercepted radiation, LAI, 3D structure, leaf angle distribution	Low cost, light weight, convenient operation, simple data processing	Image amplitude, low radiometric resolution, lack of proper calibration	Samseemoung et al., 2012; Chapman et al., 2014; Torres-Sanchez et al., 2014; Guo et al., 2015
	Canon Ixus 110 IS RGB	145	Red, Green, Blue	–
Multispectral camera	Tetracam ADC-Lite	200	Red, Green, NIR	520~920 nm	Leaf nitrogen content, yield, LAI, chlorophyll, biomass, weed, emergence, spring stand	Low cost, flexibility	Less bands, low spectral resolution and discontinuous spectrum	Overgaard et al., 2010; Swain et al., 2010; Nasi et al., 2015; Sankaran et al., 2015a; Vega et al., 2015
	Tetracam MCA-6	530	6	490~920 nm
Hyperspectral imager	Cubert UHD185	470	125	450–950	Net photosynthesis, LAI, biomass, nitrogen, chlorophyll, yield, disease detection	More bands, high spectral resolution, ability of imaging	High cost, cumbersome data processing, sensitive to weather	Zarco-Tejada et al., 2013; Nigon et al., 2015
	HySpex VNIR-1600	4,600	160	400–1,000
	Micro-Hyperspec VNIR model	700	324	380–1,000
Thermal imager	FLIR Thermovision A40M	1,400	–	7.5–13 μm	Canopy temperature, stomatal conductance, water potential	Indirect determination of crop growth status under abiotic and biotic stress	Sensitive to the weather, frequent calibration, difficult to eliminate the influence of soil background	Berni et al., 2009b; Torres-Sanchez et al., 2015
LIDAR	RIEGL VUX-1UAV	3,500	NIR	–	Plant height, biomass	Rich point cloud information, Effective acquisition of high precision horizontal and vertical vegetation canopy structure parameters	High cost, Large data processing	Wallace et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2014