Advances in Precision Agriculture Applications Based on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Dear Colleagues

Agriculture and food production will face enormous challenges with a growing population and more challenging climate changes over the next few years. To overcome these difficulties, researchers must develop innovative and intelligent technologies for more efficient, sustainable, and precise agriculture. 

Currently, there is a strong trend towards designing artificial-intelligence-based solutions enabling autonomous robotic systems to perform a wide range of agricultural tasks in orchards, vineyards, polytunnels, and farms. For example, precise spot spraying, weeds species recognition and killing, soft-fruit recognition and picking, crop health monitoring, plant phenotyping as well as crop yield estimation are just a few examples of how intelligent robots are taking over fields around the world. 

The agricultural field introduces several challenges, particularly for precision farming applications. Indeed, changes in seasons and weather conditions, crop growth and rotation, dense vegetation, different maturity levels of fruits, and the existence of diseases and fungi in plants all create a dynamic and poorly structured environment. 

Considering the latest advances in artificial intelligence and robotics technology around the world, a new trend for precision agriculture synergizes advanced control theory, computer vision algorithms, machine learning techniques, and deep learning approaches, allowing robots to perform agricultural tasks with a higher level of autonomy and better decision making. In this context, this Special Issue welcomes papers related to the development and deployment of new precision farming technologies based on artificial intelligence and autonomous agricultural robotics. 

Papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer-review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications. This special session invites authors to submit high-quality research papers on the topics which include - but are not limited to - the following:

• Design, modeling and control of agricultural robots
• Autonomous navigation in farms and orchards
• Reinforcement learning for task planning
• Machine learning for computer vision
• Automated harvesting systems
• Fruit detection and yield estimation
• Automated plant phenotyping systems
• Plant health systems for identification and treatment of diseases
• Weed and crop pest management
• Soil, irrigation and pruning management
• Aerial and ground vehicles for soil/crop monitoring and prediction
• Small-scale robots for nurseries and greenhouses
• Remote sensing for precision agriculture
• Human-robot interaction for agricultural tasks.

Dr. Antonio Candea Leite
Dr. Sahameh Shafiee
Dr. Morten Lillemo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.