ARTICLE IN PRESS

VEGFIL: VALIDATION EXPERIMENTS FOR A YOLO-BASED VEGETATION FILTERING SYSTEM OF AUTONOMOUS ROVER NAVIGATION IN OIL PALM PLANTATION

SAMUEL J YAN CHE THAM2; KIAN LUN SOON1*; KEAN HAO TEOH2; ELVIN KANG SHEN YEOH3; YI CHEN WONG3; ALAN SHEN KAI CHUNG3; SHOU WEI CHAN3; LAM TATT SOON4 and NAI SHYAN LAI1*

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21894/jopr.2026.0024
Received: 8 April 2025   Accepted: 1 April 2026   Published Online: 26 May 2026
ABSTRACT

Autonomous navigation in oil palm plantations faces significant challenges due to dense vegetation, uneven terrain and the inability of traditional systems to distinguish between obstructive and non-obstructive flora. Current rover navigation systems often misclassify low-lying vegetation (e.g., grass, shrubs) as obstacles, leading to inefficient path planning and increased operational costs. To address this gap, a vegetation filtering (VEGFIL) system that leverages YOLOv8n object detection and point cloud data from ZED camera was developed to enhance navigation accuracy of autonomous rovers in the plantation environments. Validated using datasets, the system achieved an average precision of 95%, recall of 86%, accuracy of 85%, and F1-Score of 0.9 in the vegetation classification. This innovation addresses critical gaps in agricultural automation, minimising misclassification of low-lying vegetation, optimising route planning, addressing labour shortages and promoting sustainable resource management. This innovation advances the adoption of precision agriculture, offering scalable automation for high-value crops where navigation accuracy directly impacts yield and ecological sustainability.

KEYWORDS:


1 School of Engineering and Centre for Sustainable Societies,
Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus,
47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.

2 School of Engineering,
Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU),
57000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

3 Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronics (IMEN),
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.

4 School of Architecture, Building, and Design,
Taylor’s University, Lakeside Campus, Subang Jaya,
47500 Selangor, Malaysia.

* Corresponding author e-mail: KianLun.Soon@taylors.edu.my; NaiShyan.Lai@taylors.edu.my