Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been a cornerstone in many global industries including transportation, manufacturing and aerospace. Meanwhile, the global demand for plant and livestock production is rising rapidly due to the growing population. The agricultural industry around the world is facing a critical challenge to meet this demand because of a lack of arable land for expanding current production, shortage of farm labor, and worker health and safety issues such as exposure to chemicals, ladder falls and repetitive motion injuries, as well as the impact of extreme weather events and the changing climate. Many researchers and technology companies have been developing and evaluating new approaches and applications of AI and robotic technologies in agriculture to address these challenges. These technologies, when successfully employed in crop and animal agriculture, could increase input efficiency, minimize dependence on manual labor, reduce production costs, improve worker health and safety, and enhance the yield and quality of agricultural products (e.g. grain, fruit, vegetables, milk, meat) with reduced adverse impact on the environment. This Research Topic will bring about more opportunities for synergies in AI and robotics research relevant to agricultural industries, facilitating the exchange of innovative ideas across different disciplines such as agricultural engineering and computer science.

The Research Topic aims to encourage agricultural innovation, directly addressing one of the most critical challenges the world is currently facing: significantly increasing agricultural productivity to meet the rapidly increasing demand for food, fiber and fuel due to increasing global population and rapidly changing lifestyles in developing counties. This collection is dedicated to unveiling the forefront of advancements in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence within the agricultural industry, highlighting the transformative potential these technologies hold for reshaping farming practices of the future towards enhanced efficiency, sustainability, and yield.

We seek papers on topics, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Robotics and UAVs in smart agriculture
• AI and robotics applied in crop production, harvesting, and post-harvest processing
• Autonomous navigation and control of agricultural robots
• Robotic systems for food production
• AI and robotics for livestock farming
• AI and robotics for fish farming
• AI and robotic crop sensing and monitoring

This Research Topic is linked to the workshop "AI and Robotics for Future Farming" that took place at the 2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) conference and "⁠Agricultural Robotics and Automation: Driving Innovation in Agri-Food Systems" that is taking place at the 2025 IROS conference. We welcome papers that were previously published as workshop proceedings, so long as they are extended to include 30% original content. We also welcome relevant contributions that were not submitted to the workshop.

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AI and Robotics for Smart Agriculture