Winners of the EurAgEng Outstanding Paper Awards, 2020
Dr Bill Day Editor in Chief said: "The shortlist was probably the strongest there has been since the awards began, and we congratulate the authors of all shortlisted papers, but particularly the three winners:
Crop signalling: A novel crop recognition technique for robotic weed control
Model selection with a common structure: Tomato crop growth models
Robotic kiwifruit harvesting using machine vision, convolutional neural networks, and robotic arms
Rekha Raja, David C. Slaughter, Steven A. Fennimore, Thuy T. Nguyen, Vivian L. Vuong, Neelima Sinha, Laura Tourte, Richard F. Smith, Mark C. Siemens
Biosystems Engineering, Volume 187, November 2019, Pages 278-291
Model selection with a common structure: Tomato crop growth models
Wouter J.P. Kuijpers, Marinus J.G. van de Molengraft, Simon van Mourik, Albertus van ’t Ooster, Silke Hemming, Eldert J. van Henten.
Biosystems Engineering, Volume 187, November 2019, Pages 247-257
Robotic kiwifruit harvesting using machine vision, convolutional neural networks, and robotic arms
Henry A.M. Williams, Mark H. Jones, Mahla Nejati, Matthew J. Seabright, Jamie Bell, Nicky D. Penhall, Josh J. Barnett, Mike D. Duke, Alistair J. Scarfe, Ho Seok Ahn, JongYoon Lim, Bruce A. MacDonald
Biosystems Engineering, Volume 181, May 2019, Pages 140-156
Biosystems Engineering is the Official Scientific Journal of the European Society of Agricultural Engineers (EurAgEng), and every two years the papers published in the journal are assessed by the journal’s Editorial Board and two or three of the best scientific papers are celebrated by the EurAgEng Outstanding Paper Awards. The awards are sponsored by IAgrE, the owner of the journal.
This year, the shortlist of ten papers that was put to the Editorial Board included papers on
hyperspectral scanning of fruits for sophisticated quality control, optimised use of photovoltaic modules in greenhouse shading, and real time monitoring of broilers. The winners of the awards were papers on making crop plants ‘machine readable’ to facilitate accurate robotic weeding, optimal choice of crop models to facilitate model-based control, and a multi-arm kiwifruit harvesting robot designed to operate autonomously.
Biosystems Engineering is the top engineering science journal for research on optimised performance of biology-based systems. These awards help to highlight the great advances being made in scientific research in this area.