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Context

Precision agriculture techniques are essential for increasing crop yields while reducing environmental impact, particularly in the face of climate change effects. Commercial robotic solutions are actively being deployed to assist in agricultural tasks. However, autonomous robots are far from reaching their full potential in this domain. Fully autonomous robots can significantly impact precision agriculture by providing mapping, sensing, or manipulation capabilities for crops and forests, enabling fruit counting, tree diameter estimation, crop disease detection, carbon sequestration quantification, smart spraying, and biomass estimation, among others.

This workshop bridges industry and academia to discuss how to close the gap towards autonomous robots in agricultural and field robotics settings. Key topics include innovative forestry techniques for tree diameter and biomass estimation, datasets, semantic simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), motion planning and navigation in cluttered environments, crop inspections, and applications. Attendees will gain insights into the latest research and developments at the intersection of precision agriculture and robotics from academic and industrial perspectives, as well as the open challenges in the field and novel approaches to tackling them.

This workshop will also provide a forum for researchers beyond the agricultural robotics community to learn about this field, encouraging them to apply their expertise in this challenging domain.

Call for papers

The Novel Approaches for Precision Agriculture and Forestry with Autonomous Robots Workshop is an outstanding venue to submit work at the intersection of precision agriculture, precision forestry, and robotics. Late-breaking and preliminary results are encouraged in the following areas but not limited to:

  • Tree diameter and biomass estimation.
  • Fruit counting and yield estimation in orchards.
  • Autonomous sampling and environmental modeling for precision forestry and agriculture.
  • Datasets for agriculture and forestry.
  • Field deployments of agriculture and forestry robots.
  • Simultaneous localization and mapping techniques with applications to forestry and agriculture.
  • Plant disease detection using robotic systems.
  • Control applications in agriculture (fruit harvesting, bio-inspired locomotion).

Submissions should follow the IEEE Manuscript Template with a total length of two to eight pages (excluding references). The total size of the manuscript should be under 10 MB. Accepted papers are welcome to present a poster and a 5-minute lightning talk during the workshop. We will award $150 to the best paper of the workshop.

Please use CMT to submit your contribution. Papers will be reviewed by the organizing committee and invited peers.

Key dates

  • February 18 - Submissions open.
  • April 15 April 22 - Submission deadline, 11.59 pm AoE.
  • April 29 - Notification to authors.
  • May 13 - Camera ready version.
  • May 23 - Workshop.

Tree diameter estimation challenge

The Novel Approaches for Precision Agriculture and Forestry with Autonomous Robots Workshop is hosting a tree diameter estimation based on the Treescope dataset. Participants are requested to estimate tree diameter at breast height (DBH) in a provided point cloud. We will award $150 to the most accurate submission.

This challenge is an excellent opportunity for both seasoned and entry-level researchers in robotics forestry. Do not miss the chance to submit!

Important: you need to submit a one to two page description of your approach and your code in CMT if you want your submission to be considered for the award.

Challenge website: https://www.codabench.org/competitions/7343/

Key dates

  • April 14 - Submissions open for the development phase
  • May 16 - Submissions open for the testing phase
  • May 21 - Participants are required to submit a description of their approach in CMT. Deadline 11.59 pm AoE.
  • May 23 - The challenge winner will be announced at the workshop.

Speakers

Frank Dellaert

Frank Dellaert

Robotics & CV Professor at Georgia Tech - Part-time CAIO at Verdant Robotics

Tim Barfoot

Tim Barfoot

Professor at University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies - Director of Autonomous Space Robotics Lab (ASRL)

Jim Ostrowski

Jim Ostrowski

CTO at Blue River Technology - Technical advisor at Chef Robotics

Katie Driggs-Campbell

Katie Driggs-Campbell

Assistant Professor at Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, UIUC - Director of the Welcome to the Human-Centered Autonomy Lab

Stefano Carpin

Stefano Carpin

Professor in CS and Engineering at UC Merced - Director of Robotics at UC Merced

Guillermo Pita Gil

Guillermo Pita Gil

CTO at BURRO

David Cappelleri

David Cappelleri

Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University - Director of the Multi-Scale Robotics & Automation Lab (MSRAL)

Cosimo Della Santina

Cosimo Della Santina

Associate Professor at Cognitive Robotics department, TU Delft - Researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Steven Chen

Steven Chen

CEO and Co-founder at Treeswift

Konstantinos Karydis

Konstantinos Karydis

Associate Professor at Electrical & Computer Eng Dept, UC Riverside - Director of the Autonomous Robots and Control Systems (ARCS) Laboratory

Max Tubman

Max Tubman

Director of Integrations at Drone Amplified

Program

Time Speaker / Session Talk Title
9:00 Opening Remarks -
9:15 Frank Dellaert Sensing, thinking, and acting in the service of superhuman farming
9:35 Katie Driggs-Campbell On the Roles of Humans in Human-Agbot Teams: Refining, Monitoring, and Supervising
9:55 David Cappelleri P-AgBot: An autonomous mobile robot for in-row and under-canopy monitoring, assessment, and physical sampling
10:15 Spotlight 1 -
10:35 Poster & Coffee Break -
11:00 Jim Ostrowski TBA
11:20 Guillermo Pita Gil TBA
11:40 Panel 1 -
12:20 Lunch -
13:30 Tim Barfoot Towards Reliable Offroad Navigation Using Radar
13:50 Cosimo Della Santina Grasping with (Soft) Hands in Agriculture
14:10 Stefano Carpin TBA
14:30 Spotlight 2 -
14:50 Poster & Coffee Break -
15:20 Max Tubman Wildland Fire Management and Avalanche Mitigation with Drones
15:40 Steven Chen TBA
16:00 Kostas Karydis TBA
16:20 Panel 2 -
17:00 Closing Remarks -

Contact

Do not hesitate to write us for any questions:

 fclad [at] seas.upenn.edu

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge the Agricultural Robotics and Automation TC for funding the best paper award of the workshop.

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

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