Recently, there is a great attention and interest in robotics and artificial intelligence technology in various research field including agriculture and life science due to its high functionality and potentiality. In this talk, I will present several agricultural robotics projects progressing in my research group, Human-centered Robotics and Automation Laboratory. In details, the following four researches will be introduced in focus with swarm robotics, simultaneously localization and mapping, and deep learning technologies: 1) multiple agricultural unmanned aerial vehicles; 2) intelligent autonomous spraying vehicle; 3) autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle based small insect tracking and mapping system; and 4) autonomous cooperation of heterogeneous agricultural robots.

Fruit and vegetable harvesting robots have been widely studied and developed in recent years to reduce the cost of harvesting tasks such as labor and time. However, harvesting robots have many challenges due to the difficulty and uncertainty of task. In this paper, we characterize the crop environment related to the harvesting robot and analyzes state-of-the-art of the harvesting robot especially, in the viewpoint of robotic end-effector. The end-effector, an one of most important element of the harvesting robot, was classified into gripper and harvesting module, which were reviewed in more detail. Performance measures for the evaluation of harvesting robot such as test, detachment success, harvest success, and cycle time were also introduced. Furthermore, we discuss the current limitations of the harvesting robot and challenges and directions for future research.