Dear Colleagues,

With the rapid increase in the world population, first agriculture has moved on from manual operation to mechanization and is now moving toward the implementation of automated/robotic field operations to meet the growing demand for food. However, in contrast to industrial operations, agricultural field operations are complex, unstructured, ill-defined, and are subject to a high degree of variation in illumination, atmospheric, and landscape conditions in addition to the dynamic biological nature of both field and specialty crops. These challenges make it extremely difficult for implementing automated/robotic solutions in agricultural field operations. However, with the technological advancements in GPS (global positioning system), smart sensors, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), GIS (geographic information system), IoT (internet of things), machine vision, artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, cybernetics, nanotechnology, digital agriculture, precision agriculture, smart decision support systems, advanced control system, etc., the use of automated/robotic operations in agriculture is becoming reality.

The focus of this issue is to collect outstanding articles focusing (but not limited to) on robot solutions for various field operations (e.g. planting, irrigation, path planning and navigation, fertilization, spraying, canopy management, pollination, thinning, pruning, weed removal, precision crop load management, harvesting, postharvest transportation, and storage) for both field and specialty crops; precision agriculture applications; advanced in-field sensing and decision support systems; machine vision, artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, big data, IoT, cybernetics, nanotechnology, digital agriculture, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), mechatronics, and smart sensor’s, swarm robotics, and nanorobotics applications in agriculture. 

Dr. Longsheng Fu
Dr. Satoru Sakai
Dr. Chao Chen
Dr. Yaqoob Majeed
Guest Editors

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• robotics for field and specialty crops
• agricultural automation
• machine vision
• deep learning
• machine learning
• advanced in-field sensing and decision support systems
• swarm robotics
• nanorobotics
• smart sensors
• precision agriculture
• digital agriculture
• agriculture 4.0
• instrumentation
• big data
• cybernetics
• SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping)
• ICT applications
• IoT in agriculture