An automatic inspection system for pest detection in granaries using YOLOv4

Stored-grain pests cause serious economic losses during grain storage. Therefore, it is important for us to know the accurate number and species of stored grain pests as soon as possible so that appropriate measures can be taken to reduce economic losses. However, current research on grain pest detection has two problems. The background of the dataset does not contain any grain, so the results cannot be applied to detect pests in actual situations. The other problem is that methods based on pest traps cannot reflect situations on the surface of the whole granary. This paper proposes an automatic system of pest detection and counting to solve these problems. This system consists of two main parts: a deep learning object detection model called YOLOv4 and a small car with a camera and a supplementary light. And YOLOv4 model that has been trained is embedded in the car. The car can run on the surface of the granary. The camera on the small car can take photos of the pests for YOLOv4 to identify the species and number of pests. In the experiment, a few hundred kilograms of wheat were used to lay a simulated granary. And 2 typical stored-wheat pests, namely, the red flour beetle and the rice weevil, were taken as the research objects. The experimental results demonstrated that the mean average precision (mAP) of the proposed method reached 97.55%, which can meet the accuracy requirements of the detection and counting of pests in the granary in practical applications. The system solves the randomness and insufficient accuracy of pest traps and human eye recognition. And the system can be used to the early warning of pests in granary, which has high accuracy and completely release manual labor.