Following the machines, people and ideas shaping agriculture. Selected developments, clear context and a link to the original source.
Robotics. Intelligence. Agriculture.
59 stories in Field robotics.
Washington State University reported a gentle apple-gripping design in June 2024, taking inspiration from human picking and planning its integration with a lower-cost robotic arm and vision system.
ETH Zurich highlighted a July 2024 award for research on planning autonomous routes through orchards and vineyards, developed within the Lonomy programme and building on earlier agricultural robotics work.
Ce Yang’s University of Minnesota laboratory presented a small quadruped prototype in October 2024, exploring how legged mobility could support wheat disease phenotyping where other observation platforms struggle.
A March 2025 university report describes Miguel Torres’s team developing an adaptable mobile manipulator for tasks including delicate-fruit handling, with sensing and perception still being refined.
UBC Okanagan researchers received a Husky A300 platform for real-world autonomy experiments, with agricultural work involving field mapping and targeted interventions alongside a separate wildfire-research programme.
India’s Press Information Bureau reported FarmBot in May 2025, describing a semi-automatic tracked platform that combines a robotic arm, leaf-image analysis and pesticide application under agricultural research.
Universidad Distrital researchers reported a remotely controlled, 3D-printed legged prototype using eight servomotors and a Raspberry Pi Pico W, testing a low-cost route into agricultural terrain research.
In July 2019, Cambridge reported field tests of a lettuce-harvesting prototype that identified suitable heads and controlled cutting and gripping, while openly acknowledging that human workers remained faster.
A Finnish project pilot connected machines from different suppliers through shared mission software, testing how farms, robot operators and AI providers could cooperate in the same agricultural workflow.
A European research project integrated positioning, perception and variable-rate spraying into the WETA robot, addressing the difficulties of moving and applying treatments in narrow, sloping vineyard environments.
The completed European project reported a robotic crop-care system that combines vehicles, implements and supervisory software, with field pilots examining both operational performance and barriers to adoption.
The European research project paired aerial crop observations with the Bonirob ground platform, exploring how information collected over a field could guide local mechanical or chemical interventions.
