Mapping Gaps in Sugarcane Fields Using UAV-RTK Platform

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper needs minor revision

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your work and the effort put into this paper. I appreciate the clarity and comprehensibility of your writing, making the information very accessible to readers. However, I have concerns about the novelty of the topic addressed in the study. The comparison between non-RTK and RTK is a well-trodden path in the field, and the results of your study did not bring any new or unexpected insights that would warrant further exploration of this topic. 

Studies have been conducted to investigate the influence of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) accuracy on photogrammetric reconstruction.

Here are some comments:

13 and 45 - UAV abbreviation should be occurred one time in the paper. Other abbreviations also.

136 - What kind of algorithm, could you explain in detail? The gap is measured between plants' borders. Can a shadow affect the measurements? Since the time of data collection (Table 2) is very different between trials a shadow can provide a gap error.

 

It's essential to collect more data samples over time to evaluate the performance and accuracy of GNSS in different conditions and at different times. This is particularly important when using GNSS for precise tasks such as georeferencing in photogrammetric reconstruction, where accuracy is crucial. I think, there must be repetitions in the trials.

 

Thank you.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

General comments

This paper evaluates the potential of RTK imagery from UAVs for mapping gaps in sugarcane and compares it to conventional UAV approaches. The paper demonstrates the importance of using RTK for site-specific management of sugarcane gaps. However, no techniques are proposed to improve the performance of UAVs in this task. As a result, the paper lacks sufficient originality and the presentation of its logic could be clearer.

Detailed comments

1. The paper’s presentation of its main innovations is not clear enough. It is recommended to emphasize them in the abstract and introduction.

2. The paper only presents a proposal for mapping gaps in sugarcane, which does not match its title. It is suggested to adjust the title to fit the paper more.

3. Page 2, Section 2. This section mainly describes the experimental details, but not the techniques used in this paper. It is recommended to add an additional section to specifically introduce the technical details of the method in this paper.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors' response were not convincing.

1.The methods in Section 2 only describe how the experiments were conducted, but the technical details about the UAV-RTK platform mentioned in the title are also indispensable. The construction of this platform should be introduced in detail, especially for the RTK technology, which plays an important role in the task but is not described in detail.

2. Theoretical and experimental analyses should be conducted simultaneously to ensure the objectivity of the conclusions. This paper only analyzes the experimental results without sufficient theoretical support, which introduces a certain degree of randomness. How can the paper’s conclusions be theoretically sound?

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf