Over the last decade, agricultural robotics and mechatronics have advanced significantly. Notable examples include the commercialization of unmanned agricultural vehicles for cereal cultivation and the development of artificial intelligence applications in agricultural image analysis rooted in field science. However, food-security-related challenges in agricultural robotics and mechatronics cannot be effectively addressed through simple extensions or combinations of existing solutions alone. Meanwhile, the importance of food security is rapidly increasing under changing environmental, economic, and societal conditions. Nevertheless, some of these challenges have not yet been recognized or formally defined, and thus remain latent. This special issue has two primary purposes. (I) It reveals previously overlooked challenges not only within agricultural fields but also in off-field infrastructures and agricultural facilities, thereby broadening the scope of agricultural robotics and mechatronics. (II) It presents the potential of “new seeds,” including novel scientific understandings of real agricultural components and systems as well as principled integrations of existing solutions with artificial intelligence and data science methodologies. Beginning with this editorial, this special issue comprises 20 papers, including five development reports and one review. We express our sincere gratitude to all the authors and reviewers. We hope that this special issue will stimulate further research and development addressing food-security-related challenges in agricultural robotics and mechatronics.
Sakai et al. (Sun,) studied this question.