Toward Real-World Deployment: Trends in Autonomous Field Robotics

Dear Colleagues,

Autonomous field robots are transforming operations across a wide range of domains—including agriculture, mining, construction, marine and aerial exploration, infrastructure inspection, and environmental monitoring. These systems must navigate and act in unstructured, dynamic, and often harsh environments—posing significant challenges in perception, control, localization, planning, and robustness. While laboratory-scale demonstrations continue to advance rapidly, the real-world deployment of autonomous robots remains a critical frontier.

This Special Issue aims to bring together recent advances and emerging trends that enable the successful deployment of autonomous field robotics systems in practical applications. We welcome original research and review articles that explore system-level integration, real-time decision-making, resilient autonomy, long-term field testing, and cross-disciplinary innovations that push the boundaries of robotics in the wild.

Contributions involving real-world deployment and experimental validation are particularly encouraged. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Field robotics and autonomous systems;
• Perception and control in unstructured environments;
• Robustness, resilience, and long-term autonomy;
• Real-world deployment and validation;
• Sensor fusion and environmental perception;
• Task and motion planning in dynamic environments;
• Systems integration for field-ready platforms.

Dr. Jay Wang
Dr. Ziyang Wang
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. Machines 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 2400 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.