Current students

I am proposing to research and innovate in agricultural robotics with the aim of enabling Climate Smart Agriculture.

Due to the increasing awareness of the heavy ecological footprint of industrial agriculture, both industrial stakeholders and the public sector are showing interest in increasing the efficiency and reduce the use of chemicals in farming processes.

 The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has defined Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) as “a strategy to address the challenges of climate change and food security by sustainably increasing productivity, bolstering resilience, reducing GHG emissions, and enhancing the achievement of [...] development goals” [http://www.fao.org/climate-smart-agriculture].

I focus the research on the optimisation of automated phytosanitary treatments in open fields, orchards, and greenhouses with the aim of reducing both the use (waste) of water and the application of synthetic chemicals which create toxic accumulations in the soil.

This will be achieved thanks to informed decisions about when, where, and how to treat based on the analysis through machine learning of proximity (e.g., images, IoT, etc.) and remote sensor data. I foster an integrated approach to acquisition (IoT), analysis (AI), and operationalization (Robotics) of temporal, spatial, and individual plant data to promote farmers’ informed operations.

I will develop data acquisition techniques (proximal and remote sensing) and advanced analysis (ML and AI) of temporal and spatial field data capable of producing evidence-based decisions. Such decisions will be timely operationalized on the field (via Robotics).