Application of Computational Intelligence Methods in Agricultural Soil–Machine Interaction: A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is generally very good. The authors pointed out the limitation of conventional soil-tool/machine interaction, discussed the fundamentals of computational intelligence (CI), and also showed the application of such models with respect to soil tillage and traction. However, the major limitation of this article is that the authors did not extensively discuss the accuracy of the CI models cited in the manuscript. One important indicator for measuring soil-tool/machine prediction model accuracy is relative error, which was not discussed in this manuscript.

The model prediction accuracy was only mentioned between lines 682 and 684. Nonetheless, that is a general statement. The authors need to give detailed information about the model prediction accuracy in relation to the research work cited in this manuscript. Different methods have been discussed, but the method with the best prediction accuracy has not been shown.

All the figures in the manuscript were captioned as “Figure …” but cited in the text as “Fig. …”. One format should be used for consistency. Also, figure captions should stand alone from the main text (e.g., Figures 8 and 9).

The following are additional comments also highlighted in the manuscript.

1.      The phrase “are discussed” should be deleted (line 14).

2.     Shape and cutting edge sharpness describe the geometry, so “geometry” should not be included here (line 49). A similar mistake was also found on line 121.

3.     “Artificial neural networks” was wrongly abbreviated (line 167).

4.      “w.r.t.” should be written in full (line 214).

5.      “Eqn.” is missing (line 218).

6.     Figure 1 was placed between lines 220 – 221, but it was cited below on line 236. The figure should be repositioned.

7.     “V-C” stands for what? (line 241).

8.      “Due to lower its lower bias”, the phrase needs to be corrected (lines 243 – 244).

9.      “LASSO” was not previously written in full (line 252).

10.  “ However, this study is only focused on the soil-machine interaction centered around traction, tillage, and soil compaction” should be deleted since this point is captured in the introduction (line 513).

11.  “A more than….” Check grammar (line 516).

12.  Figure 14, it is unclear whether or not these articles utilized CI (lines 518 and 519).

13.   “MLR” not previously written in full (line 533)

14.   “A several studies…” wrong article usage (line 544).

15.   “Taghavifar et. al (2013)” inconsistent citation style (line550).

16.   “Tractors are the major power source in a field agriculture” is unclear (line 554).

17.   “The developed a CI-based…” is unclear (line 584).

18.   “ The FIS based model was proposed to predict the soil fragmentation resulted form ….”. Restructure the sentence (lines 625 and 626).

19.   Table 1, citations [135] and [138] have the wrong surname.

20.   “Wheel contact area with a soil varies with a wheel parameters …”. Wrong article usage making the sentence hard to understand (line 652).

21.   “…36 studies (50.7%),” Figure 15b should be cited here (line 663).

22.   “Some such methods…” unclear. Check the grammar (line 709).

23.  “…the researcher has proposed…” not clear. Check grammar (line 722).

24.  “…a alternative to CI…” wrong article usage. This grammatical error is common throughout the manuscript. Therefore the authors should take their time to correct such mistakes.

25.   “DNNs”? Check the abbreviation (line 758).

26.   “Unfortunately, DNNs have yet…” must be a different sentence (line 760).

27.  References should be provided (line 855).

Author Response

Responses are added in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript draft is devoted to an interesting problem that touches on the application CI methods in agriculture. The authors review the CI techniques implemented in soil-machine interactions, especially in the context of tillage, traction, and compaction. The paper reviews and summarizes a lot of researches on soil-machine interaction studies where CI methods were employed. However, I have the following remarks:

1.      Abstract. The authors mentioned that the study reviews and summarizes the 50 selected articles on soil-machine interaction studies where CI methods were employed. In references, the authors presented 260 papers. It would be better to clarify what exactly the papers mentioned authors.

2.      Introduction section is good. In the final part of the introduction, a brief overview of the rest of the paper should be written. It is appropriate for the authors to explain not only the structure but also the logic of the remainder of the paper.

3.      The Methodology section is missing. The authors should describe with sufficient detail the used methods to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited.

4.      The contribution and innovation to the research area are not suggested in the article. The article does not conduct rational discussion and comparison with others.

5.      The conclusion is not explained properly. The conclusion section should be extended using a comparison between the authors’ results and the initial hypothesis.

6.      The authors should show the feasibility of using their results in practice.

 

7.      The research problem discussed in the article is not a new topic. The article does not point out major differences from related research. No innovative combination of techniques from different disciplines is introduced.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Responses are available in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The authors have clarified in response to first remark very well. But authors still did not change the abstract.

2. The review paper should demonstrate the great depth of knowledge and understanding of the authors, in a particular subject area. The authors should explain why they have written the paper and how they have dealt with the subject area. The content of the paper needs to be academically inquisitive, and make a critical analysis of the research. The paper should end with a section in which the state-of-the-art is summarized and future trends in research highlighted.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf