Evaluation of Autonomous Mowers Weed Control Effect in Globe Artichoke Field

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is not explained what a conventional system consists of and therefore it is not clear why the proposed system is better.

And for that reason it is also not clear why, the estimated primary energy consumption for the autonomous management of the mower was lower than the consumption of the conventional system, with a difference of 704.63 kWh ⋅ ha-1⋅ year-1.

Further studies would be useful to investigate the effects of these autonomous mowers weed management on weed biodiversity, to better understand the consequences of their use on the environment.

Complete table 4 of the characteristics with the following data: vehicle weight, engine power, type of engine (electric or gasoline). It is not credible that the power consumption during cutting and moving is only 25-40 W.

The energy consumptions of the tested autonomous mowers do not have to be estimated or calculated, they have to be measured.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The work is well done but I miss more information about why tractors or other weed control methods are not used and tested. In other production areas, herbicides and plastic mulches are used to avoid mowing weeds.

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Reviewer 3 Report

The paper on “Evaluation of Autonomous Mowers Weed Control Effect in 2 Globe Artichoke Field” presents the comparison of the performances of three different autonomous mowers (AM1, AM2, AM3) and conventional weed management according to the percentage of area  mowed and primary energy consumptions.  The results showed higher weed control effect and lower energy consumption using autonomous mowers  in comparison with conventional weed management. Such results of this paper are valuable in the context of sustainable agriculture and the development of non-chemical weed control methods.

The organization and the structure of the article are satisfactory and in the agreement with the journal instructions for authors. The Introduction and Methods sections are well prepared. . Additional value of manuscript are the photos of the tested equipments. Results were analyzed statistically and clearly presented. The discussion is based on well selected literature. The Conclusions section contains the most important results.

The weakness of the paper is the lack of economic analysis containing the costs of autonomous mower buying or leasing by farmers.

The paper is written using good scientific language. Minor remarks are presented in the pdf of the paper.

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Reviewer 4 Report

The paper is interesting and well presented. However, some point of view or review to support a battery-operated Mower is necessary. It is also important, what is possible usage of such application? Whether multi-purpose use of such Mowers possible? like in a Smart farming robot or programmable with visual input. Just I checked from the same MDPI paper to know https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy11030530 and related smart farming with image processing/automation. Some typos to check and update say for example, Eq(2) variable and its variable font type on 267/268 pages and then after.  After the autonomous experiments with three mowers, what strategy can be possible now or future so that mowers can communicate with one another and do the task more optimally? A discussion is interesting for future work.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It can be published as it has been corrected.