Advances in Precision Agriculture Applications Based on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Precision and Digital Agriculture".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 June 2022) | Viewed by 9152

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 1433 Ås, Norway
Interests: modeling and control; visual servoing; agricultural robotics; precision agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Biosciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway
Interests: pattern recognition; classification; machine learning; feature extraction; image processing; advanced machine learning; mechanical properties; computer vision; signal, image and video processing; supervised learning

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Biosciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Ås, Norway
Interests: plant genetics; plant breeding; QTL mapping; resistance breeding; molecular genetics; host-pathogen interactions; powdery mildew control; pre-harvest sprouting resistance; waterlogging tolerance; plant disease detection
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

Keywords

  • precision agriculture
  • agricultural robotics
  • plant disease detection
  • image-based plant classification
  • crop health monitoring
  • machine vision
  • machine learning
  • deep learning

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

20 pages, 5356 KiB  
Article
Smart-Map: An Open-Source QGIS Plugin for Digital Mapping Using Machine Learning Techniques and Ordinary Kriging
by Gustavo Willam Pereira, Domingos Sárvio Magalhães Valente, Daniel Marçal de Queiroz, André Luiz de Freitas Coelho, Marcelo Marques Costa and Tony Grift
Agronomy 2022, 12(6), 1350; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/agronomy12061350 - 01 Jun 2022
Cited by 28 | Viewed by 8608
Abstract
Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have been used as an alternative to conventional and geostatistical methods in digital mapping of soil attributes. An advantage of ML algorithms is their flexibility to use various layers of information as covariates. However, ML algorithms come in many [...] Read more.
Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have been used as an alternative to conventional and geostatistical methods in digital mapping of soil attributes. An advantage of ML algorithms is their flexibility to use various layers of information as covariates. However, ML algorithms come in many variations that can make their application by end users difficult. To fill this gap, a Smart-Map plugin, which complements Geographic Information System QGIS Version 3, was developed using modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools. To generate interpolated maps, Ordinary Kriging (OK) and the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm were implemented. The SVM model can use vector and raster layers available in QGIS as covariates at the time of interpolation. Covariates in the SVM model were selected based on spatial correlation measured by Moran’s Index (I’Moran). To evaluate the performance of the Smart-Map plugin, a case study was conducted with data of soil attributes collected in an area of 75 ha, located in the central region of the state of Goiás, Brazil. Performance comparisons between OK and SVM were performed for sampling grids with 38, 75, and 112 sampled points. R2 and RMSE were used to evaluate the performance of the methods. SVM was found superior to OK in the prediction of soil chemical attributes at the three sample densities tested and was therefore recommended for prediction of soil attributes. In this case study, soil attributes with R2 values ranging from 0.05 to 0.83 and RMSE ranging from 0.07 to 12.01 were predicted by the methods tested. Full article
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