EPSRC AgriFoRwArds CDT

Agri-FoRwArdS - Robotics

The AgriFoRwArds Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) is a world-leading research initiative focused on the future of agri-food robotics.

It is a collaboration between three prominent UK universities: the University of Lincoln, the University of Cambridge, and the University of East Anglia. AgriFoRwArds CDT is funded by UK research council EPSRC.

The CDT's primary mission is to train the next generation of highly skilled researchers and leaders in the field of agri-food robotics. By bringing together expertise in robotics, AI, and agriculture, the program aims to address critical challenges facing the food supply chain, such as population growth, climate change, and labour shortages. Students in the program undertake a four-year, fully-funded PhD, working on interdisciplinary projects that have a direct impact on the agricultural and food industries, often in partnership with leading companies in the sector.

The School of Computing Sciences is proud to support up to 10 PhD students in this programme.

The recruitment for our final cohort 23/24 has been completed, therefore we are no longer accepting applications for this programme.

Academics

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Postgraduate Researchers

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Harry Rogers

Harry's PhD project entitled 'Closing the Loop on Precision Spraying' was carried out in collaboration with Syngenta, under the primary supervision of Prof Beatriz De Le Iglesia.

Cohort 2020/21

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Mazvydas gudelis

Mazvyda's PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with CEFAS, under the primary supervision of Dr Michal Mackiewicz.

Cohort 2020/21

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James Bennett

James' PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with Antobot, with primary supervision from Prof Graham Finlayson.

Cohort 2021/22

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Afsaneh Karami

Afsaneh's PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with CEFAS, under the primary supervision of Prof Graham Finlayson

Cohort 2022/23

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Andrew Simpson

Andrew's PhD project is being carried out under the primary supervision of Dr Cheng Wang.

Cohort 2022/23

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Calvin John

Calvin's PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with CHC Tech Ltd and under the primary supervision of Dr YingLiang Ma.

Cohort 2022/23

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George Davies

George's PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with NIAB and under the primary supervision of Dr Michal Mackiewicz.

Cohort 2023/24

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Violet Mayne

Violet's PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with Living Optics and CEFAS, and under the primary supervision on Prof Graham Finlayson.

Cohort 2023/24

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Sean Chow

Sean's PhD project is being carried out in collaboration with CEFAS, under the primary supervision of Prof Graham Finlayson.

Cohort 2023/24

Selected Publications

  • Rogers, H. and Fox, C. (2020) ‘An Open Source Seeding Agri-Robot‘, UKRAS20 Conference: Robots into the real world Proceedings.

  • Rogers, H., Dawson, B., Clawson, G., and Fox., C. (2021) ‘Extending an Open Source Hardware Agri-Robot with Simulation and Plant Re-identification‘, Oxford Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems Conference 2021.

  • Rogers, H., De La Iglesia, B., Zebin, T., Cielniak, G., Magri, B. (2023). An Automated Precision Spraying Evaluation System. Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2023: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 14136. Springer, Cham.

  • Rogers, H., De La Iglesia, B., Zebin, T., & Cielniak, G. (2023) An Agricultural Precision Sprayer Deposit Identification System, 2023 IEEE 19th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), Auckland, New Zealand, 2023, pp. 1-6.

  • Rogers, H., De La Iglesia, B., & Zebin, T. (2023) Evaluating the Use of Interpretable Quantized Convolutional Neural Networks for Resource-Constrained Deployment, Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management, 1, pp.109-120.

  • Rogers, H., De La Iglesia, B., Zebin, T., Cielniak, G., & Magri, B. (2024) Deep Learning for Precision Agriculture: Post-Spraying Evaluation and Deposition Estimation. Pre-print.

  • Foster, J., Gudelis, M., Ghalamzan Esfahani, A. (2022) Robotic Perception in Agri-food Manipulation: A Review. Task-Informed Grasping: Agri-Food manipulation (TIG-III) workshop (Aug 2022).

  • Gudelis, M., Mackiewicz, M., Bremner, J., & Fielding, S. (2023) Computer Vision Pipeline for Automated Antarctic Krill Analysis. Preprint.

  • Bennett, J., Moncur, B., Fogarty, K., Clawson, G., and Fox, C. (2022) ‘Towards Open Source Hardware Robotic Woodwind: an Internal Duct Flute Player‘ International Computer Music Conference.

  • Bennett, J., & Finlayson, G.D. (2024) Simplifying Tone Curves for Image Enhancement, Pre-print.

EPSRC Agriforwards CDT