This conference brought together 14 talks from leading researchers across the UK, Spain, Norway, the USA and Japan, exploring cutting-edge challenges in agri-food robotics, researcher training and paths to commercialisation.

Professor Fumiya Iida

Led by Professor Fumiya Iida, Deputy Director of the AgriFoRwArdS Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), and Professor Marc Hanheide, Director of the AgriFoRwArdS CDT, the two-day conference, held recently, brought together engineering researchers and students from the UK and abroad.

The online format of the conference provided an opportunity to invite guest speakers from different parts of the world, and introduce their research and in-field observations to a worldwide agri-food robotics community, including agricultural industry representatives who run agricultural robotics companies in Spain, USA, UK and Japan.

The attendees discussed how developments in robotics and other modern technologies can help address pressing problems in food supply.

The conference presentations also covered issues such as climate change, soil degradation and unsustainable agricultural practices.

There were 14 lectures in total, watched by more than 150 conference participants. The lecture topics included:

• Soft robotics and agriculture
• Training human teachers to teach robot learners
• Driving around is easy: challenges and solutions for long-term autonomy and agriculture
• Organic farming and technology: sustainable agriculture by organic farming and robots
• Human-robot collaboration: strategies for improving farm labour efficiency
• Strawberry harvesting problem
• Robotic perception for agricultural applications
• Increasing workers and robots: harvesting speeds
• Building an agricultural AI workbench and toolbox in the cloud
• From genetics to automation: mind the gap
• Robots for growers of fresh raspberries
• Enhancing decision-making for emerging technologies: the integration of digital tools
• Opinion of agri-food robotics technologies and their future
• What is Ceres Agri-Tech and how it helps emerging agri-food technologies

In addition to invited talks and panel discussions, the conference offered an opportunity for CDT students to present their research in front of an international audience via specially organised break-out sessions. Each break-out session was finalised by debating the research ideas presented earlier.

The break-out sessions discussions covered topics including, but not limited to:

• High resolution biosensing for bioproduction and monitoring
• SHARP – multi-Sensor Human Activity Recognition and intention Prediction
• Virtual model control and augmented reality for human-robot object handovers
• Operation of multiplexed soft robotic sensors
• Deep reinforcement learning to optimise water in irrigation schemes using Bayesian Deep Network to model uncertainty.

Professor Iida said: “The Agri-Food Robotics Online Conference marks the first public event of our CDT, bringing together 14 talks from leading researchers across the UK, Spain, Norway, the USA and Japan. Through keynote talks and panel discussions, we explored cutting-edge challenges in agri-food robotics, researcher training and paths to commercialisation.”

About the AgriFoRwArdS CDT

Established by the University of Lincoln in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia (UEA), AgriFoRwArdS brings together a unique collaboration of leading researchers located at the heart of the UK agri-food sector, as well as leading industrial partners from across the food, farming and robotics industries.

The Centre offers students a four-year programme in a research-intensive environment. Students conduct one year of study for the MSc in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Lincoln, followed by three years of PhD study at one of the three partner institutions.