Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers and Electronics in Agriculture journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compag Agricultural robotics research applicable to poultry production: A review Guoqiang Ren a,b,c , Tao Lin a,c, ⁎ , Yibin Ying a,c,d , Girish Chowdhary e , K.C. Ting a,b,c,e a College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China b ZJU-UIUC Institute, International Campus, Zhejiang University, Haining, Zhejiang, China c Key Laboratory of On Site Processing Equipment for Agricultural Products, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, China d Faculty of Agricultural and Food Science, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China e Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Agricultural robotics Precision livestock farming Poultry production systems Machine capabilities System integration ABSTRACT The advent of agricultural robotics research worldwide has brought substantial improvement for various ap- plications. This article provides a comprehensive review of published research and development work, em- phasizing robotics enabling machine capabilities. These machine capabilities of perception, reasoning and learning, communication, task planning and execution, and systems integration have opened possibilities for intelligent automation of current and future agricultural operations, including precision livestock farming. We have focused on the Agricultural Intelligent Automation Systems which have a high potential to be applied to agricultural production and processing, especially with applicability to poultry production. Most of the pub- lished work on agricultural robotics has been in the areas of perception and reasoning. The emphases have been in the identifcation of objects, evaluation of product quality, monitoring of plant and animal growth and de- velopment, yield prediction, and machine guidance. There has been limited published work on the task ex- ecution and systems integration aspects of agricultural robotics. Moreover, we have reviewed agricultural ro- botics research from 24 universities worldwide. Agricultural robots can be divided into three categories (monitor, harvester, and both) according to various functions. Several tables are presented to summarize the information on the key subject areas reviewed in this article. We have found that there are still many challenges that need to be addressed in robotizing agricultural tasks in general and in poultry production specifcally. The most common challenges in robotics applications have been developing robots for specifc agricultural tasks. Examples in poultry production include monitoring environmental conditions and chicken health, egg picking, and encouraging chicken movement. The approaches to addressing the technical needs have been creating in- telligent movable machines for use alongside the chickens in poultry house. The most noticeable results include Octopus Poultry Safe (OPS) robot for sanitizing poultry houses autonomously, PoultryBot for picking foor eggs, and Spoutnic for training hens to move. This trend of research and development is expected to continue. An emerging research emphasis is systems approach to study the interactions of automated tasks to achieve high efciency in whole poultry house management. 1. Introduction The heightened interest in the development of precision and smart agriculture has stimulated scientifc discussion on the application of artifcial intelligence and robotics to agricultural production systems. Intelligent and automated systems for agricultural operations are es- sential in meeting the challenge of labor shortage, carrying out re- petitive tasks, lowering human safety and health risk in performing agricultural activities, and decreasing production cost by saving time, money, and energy (Gongal et al., 2015). There have been many ex- amples of functional devices for agricultural production and processing tasks, such as transplanting machines, grafting machines, precision spraying system, precision irrigation system, weed control system, in- telligent control system in greenhouses, harvesting robots, UAV (Un- manned Aerial Vehicle), UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle), shearing robots, slaughter robots, etc. (Tai et al., 1994; Kondo and Ting, 1998). In recent years, the applications of automation technologies have provided noticeable improvements in agricultural production. Human- like machine capabilities, including perception, reasoning and learning, communication, task planning and execution, and systems integration, have been and will continue to be, the essential enablers for agricultural intelligent automation systems. The capability of perception provides https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2020.105216 Received 6 June 2019; Received in revised form 31 December 2019; Accepted 6 January 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. E-mail address: lintao1@zju.edu.cn (T. Lin). Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 169 (2020) 105216 0168-1699/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T