Optical Sensing for Agricultural Applications

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, the management of agricultural fields has advanced significantly. With the development and utilization of sensing systems for agricultural operations, farmers and farm managers are now able to take informed decisions based on real data from the field. In this respect, optical sensing has become a widely accepted solution for monitoring field, crop and soil status. Thus, advanced field management may be supported by incorporating information from various optical sensors: consumer-grade RGB-D (red green blue-depth) cameras, and LiDAR and multispectral sensors, acquired by various remote and proximal platforms (satellites, planes, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), etc.), or sensing systems installed on conventional equipment such as tractors and other human-operated vehicles. The functions of these optical sensors in agriculture include yield prediction, soil sensing, nutrient and pesticide applications, weed control, irrigation control and selective harvesting, among numerous other applications in the framework of precision agriculture, as well as navigation and context and situation awareness for operations management in agricultural environments.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to publish research articles, as well as review articles, addressing recent advances in systems and processes in the field of optical sensing, remote and proximal, for applications in agriculture. Original, high-quality contributions that have not yet been published and that are not currently under review by other journals or peer-reviewed conferences are sought. 

Indicatively, research topics include:

• Remote sensing in agriculture;
• Optical sensors in agriculture;
• Satellite data for agricultural management;
• Optical sensing systems for autonomous agricultural vehicles;
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning for sensor data analysis;
• Sensor fusion for agricultural applications;
• Sensor-based variable rate applications;
• UAVs and UGVs for crop monitoring;
• Optical sensor-based navigation and awareness;
• Field, crop and soil property mapping. 

Dr. Aristotelis C. Tagarakis
Prof. Dr. Dionysis Bochtis
Dr. Dimitrios Kateris
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. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.