This article presents development of an innovative approach to identify spectrally significant wavelength bands, for a given environment, to tune hyperspectral sensor acquisition before UAV borne surveys. As several programmable hyperspectral sensors are now available, it is often a challenge to consider the suitable wavelengths of interest. Researchers often conduct a thorough field survey to identify the composition of target endmembers in an area to identify suitable wavelengths before UAV survey, which is difficult and cumbersome. Otherwise, the selection of wavelengths by trial-and-error is error-prone.
To our knowledge, this is the first time a technique for optimal hyperspectral band (or feature) selection has been proposed to pre-tune UAV-hyperspectral sensors before the survey. A metaheuristic evolutionary workflow using Particle Swarm Optimisation was used for this. The method is easy in the field and efficient to identify optimal bands before UAV-hyperspectral surveys.