A Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Method Generated by the Space Colonization Algorithm for Automated Pruning Strategies of Trees

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript, MS, covers critically important work and represents a novel approach to an import robotic task algorithm for use in orchards and nursery operations.  

* On a whole the MS is very well written, clear and concise.  One important lacking feature is there needs to be more detail on HOW the training set for the neural network was created.  Not so much for the classification of branches versus trunks; that is clear.  What's missing is the pruning decisions, how was this incorporated into the training of the neural network, NN?  Or is that not done by the NN? Either way more detail on the subject is in order. 

* Also for the neural network itself more detail is needed; it reads like the MS is reporting that the work only used a 3 layer percepton output layer from modern convolutional neural networks, CNN; but that seems odd by today's standard so clarification would be helpful as well as a figure on the NN topology.

Can't promise I won't find anything else on second review so please consider both the above issues as well as bear in mind that the foundation of scientific method is to enable to reader to fully duplicate the work.  So in your re-write ask yourself if there's enough detail such that the reader could fully duplicate this work; and if not be sure to fill in the missing elements.  That will be the lens I will be judging the MS upon the second review once it comes back to me after your rewrite and resubmission. 

Other than that; looks like this MS has a lot of promise to be an impactful paper.

Quality of english is fine, nice job.

Author Response

Thank you for your insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers and the changes are highlighted in the manuscript. Also, Please see the attachment which includes the additional details  in response to your valuable feedback. Your insights have been instrumental in enhancing the clarity and comprehensiveness of our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In my opinion, the manuscript can be published in the AgriEngineering journal after minor revisions.

Details of my revision are in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper. We have incorporated most of the suggestions made by the reviewers and the changes are highlighted in the manuscript. In response to your constructive feedback, the modifications made to the manuscript include, but are not limited to:

1. Addition of citation information.
2. Standardization of citation formats.
3. Addition of references to Figures 2 and 4 in the text.
4. Standardization of formula indentation and formatting.
5. Addition of references to AgriEngineering Journal.

Thank you for your guidance, and we believe these changes contribute to the overall improvement of the manuscript.