Advancing Smart Farming through Agricultural Robots and Automation Technologies

A special issue of AgriEngineering (ISSN 2624-7402). This special issue belongs to the section "Agricultural Mechanization and Machinery".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2025 | Viewed by 482

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via Amendola 165/A, 70126 Bari, Italy
Interests: agricultural robotics; unmanned ground vehicles; unmanned aerial vehicles; remote sensing; sensors; agricultural automation; small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS); agricultural robotics; machine-vision; renewable energies
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Agricultural robotics and automation technologies are two rapidly spreading fields that can revolutionize agriculture through the development of robotic and automatic systems to remedy farm labor shortages, improving efficiency, productivity, and safety with a focus on sustainability.

The term agricultural robot indicates robotic machines, including unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), hybrid-tractors, manipulators, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), that support farmers or perform autonomously repetitive and labor-intensive agricultural tasks. Nowadays, the categories of these robots are continuously expanding, and their application’s scenarios can vary significantly, from land preparation and seeding, to crop protection and harvesting.

These robots can be equipped with several sensors and cameras for real-time data collection to monitor soil and environmental parameters. This can help farmers in inputs optimization, to reduce costs and environmental impact and for the early detection of pest infections or nutrient deficiencies.

In this Special Issue, original, high-quality research articles and reviews are welcome.

In this Special Issue, we invite authors to publish their research on the development and application of agricultural robots and automation technologies in the agriculture, forestry and livestock sectors.

Research areas include but are not limited to:

  • Development of robotic systems to reduce farming inputs and environmental impact.
  • Employment in agriculture, forestry, and livestock sectors of unmanned aerial vehicles.
  • 3D image reconstruction and object detection from unmanned aerial and ground vehicles.
  • Precision agriculture and smart farming solutions.
  • Application of sustainable technologies for a greener agriculture.
  • Development of hybrid-electric machinery.
  • Employment of advanced sensors in agriculture, forestry, and livestock sectors.
  • Simulations of robotic systems.
  • Implementation of algorithms for vegetation’s indices assessment, as well as for productivity and yield estimation.
  • Analysis of the challenges connected to the employment of these new technologies.

Prof. Dr. Simone Pascuzzi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • agricultural robotics
  • automation technologies
  • unmanned ground vehicles
  • unmanned aerial vehicles
  • precision agriculture, forestry, livestock
  • sensors
  • smart farming
  • image reconstruction
  • hybrid-electric machinery
  • algorithms
  • simulation

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 22734 KiB  
Article
Optimizing Orchard Planting Efficiency with a GIS-Integrated Autonomous Soil-Drilling Robot
by Osman Eceoğlu and İlker Ünal
AgriEngineering 2024, 6(3), 2870-2890; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering6030166 - 13 Aug 2024
Viewed by 232
Abstract
A typical orchard’s mechanical operation consists of three or four stages: lining and digging for plantation, moving the seedling from nurseries to the farm, moving the seedling to the planting hole, and planting the seedling in the hole. However, the digging of the [...] Read more.
A typical orchard’s mechanical operation consists of three or four stages: lining and digging for plantation, moving the seedling from nurseries to the farm, moving the seedling to the planting hole, and planting the seedling in the hole. However, the digging of the planting hole is the most time-consuming operation. In fruit orchards, the use of robots is increasingly becoming more prevalent to increase operational efficiency. They offer practical and effective services to both industry and people, whether they are assigned to plant trees, reduce the use of chemical fertilizers, or carry heavy loads to relieve staff. Robots can operate for extended periods of time and can be highly adept at repetitive tasks like planting many trees. The present study aims to identify the locations for planting trees in orchards using geographic information systems (GISs), to develop an autonomous drilling machine and use the developed robot to open planting holes. There is no comparable study on autonomous hole planting in the literature in this regard. The agricultural mobile robot is a four=wheeled nonholonomic robot with differential steering and forwarding capability to stable target positions. The designed mobile robot can be used in fully autonomous, partially autonomous, or fully manual modes. The drilling system, which is a y-axis shifter driven by a DC motor with a reducer includes an auger with a 2.1 HP gasoline engine. SOLIDWORKS 2020 software was used for designing and drawing the mobile robot and drilling system. The Microsoft Visual Basic.NET programming language was used to create the robot navigation system and drilling mechanism software. The cross-track error (XTE), which determines the distances between the actual and desired holes positions, was utilized to analyze the steering accuracy of the mobile robot to the drilling spots. Consequently, the average of the arithmetic means was determined to be 4.35 cm, and the standard deviation was 1.73 cm. This figure indicates that the suggested system is effective for drilling plant holes in orchards. Full article
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