Editorial: Special issue on agricultural robotics

Abstract

It can be argued that one of the earliest forms of robotics is agricultural automation, now undergoing a great revival in its activities. Its importance in the productivity of the agricultural crops is well established, but recent advancements in agricultural robotics seek not only to improve farming capacity with minimal human interference, but also to improve the efficiency of the tasks and the quality of the resulting crops through greater precision of the handling of the agricultural processes. This has seen the development in agricultural robotics centred around two main key phrases: autonomous agriculture and precision agriculture. The former is aimed at developing a capability to operate large farming facilities withminimumhumanmanpower, such as by the development of autonomous tractors or coordinated teams of tractors and sensor networks to monitor a large farming area. The latter aims at developing precise data-gathering as well as crop or produce handling, such as selective spraying on plants as opposed to the traditionalmethod of non-selectively spraying the entire field. Obviously, many applications also fall within both key phrases. This special issue of Springer Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics on Agricultural Robotics seeks to present the latest developments in this exciting field of robotics research. The agricultural environment today serves not only as a client to which existing fundamental techniques of robotics are applied, but also as the source of challenges to the invention