Agricultural Robotics

Ask about this topic

Overview

Agricultural robotics studies machines that monitor crops and carry out field and greenhouse work, aiming to make farming more precise and reduce labor and resource use. Systems combine cameras, depth sensors, LiDAR, and satellite or inertial data for crop perception and localization, with manipulators and compliant grippers for harvesting, pruning, and targeted treatment. Common approaches include deep-learning vision, active sensing, SLAM, model-predictive control, and reinforcement learning, increasingly tested in simulation, field datasets, and real farm trials. Robots can handle specific tasks, but reliable operation across changing light, seasons, terrain, and occlusion remains difficult, as does transferring simulated or laboratory performance to safe, selective work in the field.

Latest papers

CardsList

97 papers14 papers in the last four weeks, down 22% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Robot Learning with Vision-Language-Action Models for Agricultural Manipulation

    Oct 19, 2026Hamid Hafezi, Javad Mohammadpour Velni, Mohammadreza DavoodiAgricultural RoboticsRobotic Grasping

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634 USA

  2. Multi-Speed Field Evaluation of a Semi-Autonomous Precision Sprayer for Weed Control in Vegetable Crops

    Oct 17, 2026Md Khairul Islam, Boyang Deng, Yuzhen Lu +2Precision AgricultureAgricultural Robotics

    Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA · Department of Horticulture, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

  3. Pedicel-Targeted Strawberry Harvesting via Imitation Learning on a Low-Cost Teleoperated Robotic Arm

    Oct 16, 2026Nitin Rai, Won Suk Lee, Hongyoung Leon +1Robotic HarvestingAgricultural Robotics

    Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA. · United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Application Technology Research Unit, Wooster, OH 44691 USA.

  4. Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning for Path-Safe Target Reaching in Robotic Harvesting of Hydroponic Lettuce

    Oct 15, 2026Al Bashir, Partho Ghose, Yibin Wang +4Robotic HarvestingRL for Robotics

    Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA · Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Texas A&M University System, Dallas, TX, 75252, USA · Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA +1

  5. Force Sensor-Based Picking Pattern Analysis and Two-Jaw Gripper Design for Cherry Tomato Robotic Harvesting in Greenhouse

    Oct 13, 2026Rajmeet Singh, Manveen Kaur, Yusuf Adamu +1Robotic HarvestingRobotic Gripper Design

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS), Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Windsor, ON, Canada

  6. MARTS: A Modular Agricultural Robot for Targeted Spraying of Diseased Tomato Plants in Greenhouses

    Oct 13, 2026Rajmeet Singh, Manveen Kaur, Yusuf Adamu +2Agricultural RoboticsPrecision Agriculture

    Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence Abu Dhabi, UAE · Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS) Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE · Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Windsor ON, Canada +1

  7. Distributed area coverage path planning subject to the inclusion of a headland path

    Oct 11, 2026Mogens PlessenCoverage Path PlanningMulti-Robot Motion Planning

    Findklein GmbH, Switzerland

  8. Towards a Unified Taxonomy of Agricultural Harvesting Technologies: Linking Physical Interaction, Automation, and Selectivity

    Oct 9, 2026Renato Cristiano Torres, Fabiano Mariath D Oliveira, Claudio Gottschalg DuqueRobotic HarvestingAgricultural Robotics

    Embrapa Agricultura Digital, Research Group on Scientific Computing, Information Engineering, and Automation, Campinas, Brazil · Embrapa, Information Technology Departament, Federal District, Brazill · University of Brasilia, Computational Linguistics, Federal District, Brazil

  9. UltraLight Luma: A Novel Edge-Deployable Perception Network for Crop-Row Segmentation in Agricultural Robotics

    Oct 8, 2026Dhanushka Balasingham, Shamod Ginigaddarage, Hanojhan Rajahrajasingh +2Image SegmentationAgricultural Robotics

    Faculty of Computing, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, Malabe, Sri Lanka · Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS), University of Lincoln, UK

  10. IVG-UAV: An Intelligent Voice-Guided UAV System for Autonomous Ripe Fruit Harvesting with Vision-Based Classification and Adaptive Path Planning

    Oct 7, 2026Dinh Trung DuongAgricultural RoboticsUAV Navigation

    School of Computing SUNY Binghamton University Binghamton, United States

  11. A Swarm-Coordinated Multi-Robot System for Early Stress Detection in Agricultural Rows Using Multimodal Leaf Sensing

    Oct 6, 2026Rishi Gupta, Astha Goyal, Vinay VishwakarmaPlant Disease ClassificationAgricultural Remote Sensing

    Delhi Public School Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, India · Assistant Professor, University of Delhi · Mentor, On My Own Technology Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai, India

  12. From Sky to Soil: A Morphing Aerial-Ground Robot for Seed Deployment

    Sep 29, 2026Namai Chandra, Lining YaoAerial RoboticsRobotics

    Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, India · Morphing Matter Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA

  13. Do Not Cut When Uncertain: Rejectable and Calibrated Decision Heads for VLA Policies in Robotic Harvesting

    Sep 28, 2026Heng ZhangRobotic HarvestingUncertainty Estimation for VLA Models

  14. Recent Advances in Agentic Agri-Robotic Phenotyping: A Perspective Review from Fragmented Multimodal Sensing to Unified PhenoAgent Intelligence

    Sep 28, 2026Muhammad Owais, Ehtesham Iqbal, Samee Ullah Khan +3Plant PhenotypingAgricultural Robotics

    Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KU-CARS), Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. · Advanced Research and Innovation Center (ARIC), Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea. +1

  15. ArborSplat: Online Semantic Gaussian Splatting SLAM for Orchards

    Sep 22, 2026Alessandro Masini, Matteo Frosi, Mirko Usuelli +13DGS SLAM3D Semantic Segmentation

    Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria (DEIB), Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy

  16. AgriGen: Large-Scale Scene Generation Framework for Photorealistic Agricultural Robotics Simulation

    Sep 22, 2026Utkarsh Bajpai, Serge Tleiji, Cédric Pradalier +1Robotics SimulationSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    Georgia Tech-CNRS IRL2958, France · Notre Dame University, Lebanon; work done during internship at 1

  17. Visuomotor Robotic Pruning in Planar Orchards Using Hybrid Reinforcement Learning

    Sep 21, 2026Abhinav Jain, Cindy Grimm, Stefan LeeVisuomotor Policy LearningRobotics

    Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CoRIS) Institute, Oregon State University, Corvallis OR 97331, USA

  18. PlantShade: Predicting Plant Shadows for Lighting-Aware Robotic Agricultural Operation

    Sep 17, 2026Longchao Da, Xiaoou Liu, Xingjian Li +2Synthetic Data Generation for RoboticsAgricultural Robotics

    School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Arizona State University · Automation and Robotics Laboratory, Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University

  19. Semantic SLAM in Precision Agriculture using Bayesian Inference

    Sep 17, 2026Ruben Beumer, Sander Doodeman, René van de Molengraft +1Simultaneous Localization and MappingSemantic Mapping

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  20. Mechanical Precision Weeding with a Quadruped Robot

    Sep 17, 2026Ruben Beumer, Tom Janssen, René van de Molengraft +1Robotic Tool UseAgricultural Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands · Institute for Transport Planning and Systems, ETH Zürich, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, Zürich, Switzerland.

  21. Selective Cotton Boll Localization for Robotic Harvesting: Evaluation of Deep Learning Vision Models Under Field Conditions

    Sep 17, 2026Thevathayarajh Thayananthan, Xin Zhang, Isuru Laddusinghe Badu +6Robotic HarvestingInstance Segmentation

    School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural and Mechanical Engineering, University of Georgia, Athens, 30602, GA, USA · Department of Entomology, University of Georgia, Tifton, 31793, GA, USA · Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, 30602, GA, USA +1

  22. Active perception for robotic harvesting: 3D reconstruction and localisation of tomatoes hidden within clusters in a Mediterranean greenhouse

    Sep 16, 2026Fernando Cañadas-Aránega, Rowan Border, José C. Moreno +1Active PerceptionRobotic Harvesting

    Department of Informatics, CIESOL, ceiA3, Universidad de Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, Almería, 04120, Spain · Vision for Robotics Lab (V4RL), University of Cyprus, allipoleos 75, Nicosia, 1678, Cyprus · Department of Engineering, CIESOL, ceiA3, Universidad de Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, Almería, 04120, Spain

  23. CLASP: A Cluster-Level Autonomous Selective Picking Robot with a Soft Rolling-Band Gripper for Fresh-Market Blueberry Harvesting

    Sep 16, 2026Yixuan Xia, Yilin Cai, Natalia Belen Espinoza +4Robotic GraspingForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 USA · Department of Crop & Soil Sciences, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30605, USA · Bio-Sensing, Automation, and Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA +3

  24. Tracking the Ground: Online Lidar Identification of Robot-Induced Soil Deformation in Agricultural Environments

    Sep 14, 2026Tom Montagnon, Johann Laconte, Benoit Thuilot +2Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionAgricultural Robotics

    Universit´e Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, UR TSCF, 63000, Clermont-Ferrand, France · Institut Pascal, Universit´e Clermont Auvergne, Clermont Auvergne INP, CNRS, 63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France · National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 1-31-1 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0856, Japan

  25. From Vision to Harvest: Benchmarking Vision-Language Models for Multi-Arm Robotic Fruit Harvesting

    Sep 11, 2026Vrishan Inukollu, Adyan Zaman, Anvi Kudaraya +4Robotic HarvestingRobotics

    University of California, Merced · University of California, Davis

  26. Visual-SLAM for the detection of hidden tomatoes in greenhouses by Hierarchical Localization and GLOMAP for robotized harvesting

    Sep 10, 2026Fernando Cañadas-Aránega, José C. Moreno, José L. Blanco-Claraco +1Monocular 3D ReconstructionVisual SLAM

    Department of Informatics, CIESOL, ceiA3, Universidad de Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, Almería, 04120, Spain · Department of Engineering, CIESOL, ceiA3, Universidad de Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, Almería, 04120, Spain

  27. Context-Aware Adaptive Pesticide Spraying for Agricultural Robots under Changing Weather and Terrain Using Vision-Language Models

    Sep 9, 2026Cong-Thanh Vu, Yen-Chen LiuAgricultural RoboticsPrecision Agriculture

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 70101, Taiwan

  28. Multi-Reference Path Tracking Control for an Agricultural Tractor with Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

    Sep 4, 2026Marcel Moll, Timo OksanenRobot Trajectory TrackingAgricultural Robotics

    Chair of Agrimechatronics, Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technical University of Munich, Germany

  29. Concept of a Sensor Test Environment for Dusty Agricultural Conditions

    Sep 3, 2026Peter Buckel, Johannes Hermann, Jonas Wollmann +2RoboticsAgricultural Robotics

    Technical University of Munich, Chair of Agrimechatronics and Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), 85354 Freising, Bavaria, Germany. · Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Ravensburg, 88045 Friedrichshafen, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany.

  30. DropClick: Semi-Automated One-Click Segmentation for Agricultural Robotic Data

    Sep 3, 2026Patrick Zimmer, Michael Halstead, Chris McCoolAgricultural Image AnalysisPromptable Image Segmentation

    University of Bonn, Germany · CSIRO, Australia