IROS 2016 Special session on Autonomous Farming Technologies and Agricultural Robotics

IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 2016

Growth in world population, increasing urbanisation and changing consumption habits means demand for food production is predicted to increase dramatically over the coming decades. This increased demand in food production must be achieved despite challenges such as climate change, a limited supply of new arable land and difficulties in sourcing skilled farm labour. Robotics and automation are likely to play a key role in meeting these challenges over the coming decades. There has recently been substantial research effort to improve the capabilities of autonomous farming robots with advances in areas such as robust and accurate perception, navigation, and smart planning systems. This special session will focus on current advances in the area of autonomous farming. This session is supported by the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Technical Committee on Agricultural Robotics and Automation (RAS TC-AgRA).

Papers are solicited on all areas directly related to these topics, including but not limited to:

Robots for pruning, thinning, harvesting, mowing, spraying, and weed removal
Aerial and ground robotic platforms for soil/crop monitoring, prediction, and decision making
Aerial Robotics for Environmental and Agricultural applications
Sensing in precision agriculture
Fruit and flower detection and recognition
Approaches to cost-effective sensing for day/night continuous operation
Long-term autonomy and navigation in unstructured environments
Manipulators and platforms for soil preparation, seeding, crop protection, and harvesting
Adaptive sampling and informative data collection
Adaptive technologies that manage plants, soil or animals according to as-sensed status
Theoretical and empirical decision-oriented data-analysis techniques including machine learning

List of the accepted papers

(These papers will be included in IROS2016 proceedings.)

Proof-of-Concept of a Robotic Apple Harvester
Row Following in Pergola Structured Orchards
Can You Pick a Broccoli? 3D-Vision Based Detection and Localisation of Broccoli Heads in the Field
Development of An Autonomous Tomato Harvesting Robot with Rotational PluckingGripper