Advancing Smart Farming through Agricultural Robots and Automation Technologies

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

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. AgriEngineering is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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 1600 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.

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