Ground Mobile Robots for High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping: A Review from the Closed-Loop Perspective of Perception, Decision, and Action

Abstract

High-throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP) is increasingly limited by the mismatch between the need for field-relevant, fine-grained phenotypic information and the restricted capability of conventional observation platforms under complex agricultural conditions. Ground mobile robots are emerging as the key carrier for resolving this gap because they combine close-range sensing, autonomous mobility, and physical interaction within real field environments. In this paper, a structured scoping review is presented using a closed-loop perception-decision-action pipeline as the organizing principle. Within this framework, recent advances are synthesized from the perspectives of multimodal fusion, localization-aware sensing, motion planning, deep-learning-based phenotypic analysis, active observation, robotic intervention, and edge deployment. The review further clarifies the complementary roles of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), and air-ground collaboration in multiscale phenotyping workflows. Beyond summarizing technologies, the article provides three concrete deliverables: a structured taxonomy of mobile phenotyping systems; comparative tables covering sensing modalities, localization/navigation methods, and AI models; and a research agenda linking technical progress to field deployability. The synthesis highlights four persistent bottlenecks, namely environmental generalization, annotation scarcity, limited standardization and reproducibility, and the gap between advanced models and agricultural edge hardware. Overall, ground robots are identified not merely as sensing platforms, but as the central system architecture for advancing mobile phenotyping toward autonomous, fine-grained, and field-deployable operation.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物フェノタイピング用移動ロボットについて、センシング、表現型解析、プラットフォーム分類、比較、標準化を中心に扱う方法論レビューであり、対象範囲に明確に合致する。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks are from a scoping review of ground mobile robots for plant phenotyping. The text synthesizes prior studies and mentions datasets/code availability only as a quality-appraisal criterion for cited works; no paper-specific public phenotype dataset, image/sensor data, author analysis code, trained phen

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