{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,2]],"date-time":"2026-06-02T08:37:42Z","timestamp":1780389462175,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":14,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,30]],"date-time":"2017-09-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1506729600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Robotics"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper presents a novel and modular approach to agricultural robots. Food production is highly diverse in several aspects. Even farms that grow the same crops may differ in topology, infrastructure, production method, and so on. Modular robots help us adapt to this diversity, as they can quickly be configured for various farm environments. The robots presented in this paper are hardware modular in the sense that they can be reconfigured to obtain the necessary physical properties to operate in different production systems\u2014such as tunnels, greenhouses and open fields\u2014and their mechanical properties can be adapted to adjust for track width, power requirements, ground clearance, load capacity, and so on. The robot\u2019s software is generalizing to work with the great variation of robot designs that can be realized by assembling hardware modules in different configurations. The paper presents several novel ideas for agricultural robotics, as well as extensive field trials of several different versions of the Thorvald II platform.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/robotics6040024","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2017,10,2]],"date-time":"2017-10-02T13:10:05Z","timestamp":1506949805000},"page":"24","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":146,"title":["The Thorvald II Agricultural Robotic System"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"6","author":[{"given":"Lars","family":"Grimstad","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, \u00c5s, 1432, Norway"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"P\u00e5l","family":"From","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, \u00c5s, 1432, Norway"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"16","DOI":"10.1016\/j.worlddev.2015.10.041","article-title":"The Number, Size, and Distribution of Farms, Smallholder Farms, and Family Farms Worldwide","volume":"87","author":"Lowder","year":"2016","journal-title":"World Dev."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"335","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1475-2743.2009.00236.x","article-title":"Soil compaction and soil management\u2014A review","volume":"25","author":"Batey","year":"2009","journal-title":"Soil Use Manag."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"291","DOI":"10.1007\/s13593-011-0071-8","article-title":"Soil compaction impact and modelling. A review","volume":"33","author":"Nawaz","year":"2013","journal-title":"Agron. Sustain. Dev."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ruckelshausen, A., Biber, P., Dorna, M., Gremmes, H., Klose, R., Linz, A., Rahe, F., Resch, R., Thiel, M., and Trautz, D. (2009, January 6\u20138). BoniRob\u2014An autonomous field robot platform for individual plant phenotyping. Proceedings of the European Conference on Precision Agriculture, Wageningen, The Netherlands.","DOI":"10.3920\/9789086866649_101"},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Bangert, W., Kielhorn, A., Rahe, F., Albert, A., Biber, P., Grzonka, S., Haug, S., Michaels, A., Mentrup, D., and H\u00e4nsel, M. (2013, January 8\u20139). Field-Robot-Based Agriculture: \u201dRemoteFarming. 1\u201d and \u201cBoniRob-Apps\u201d. Proceedings of the 71th Conference Land. 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Proceedings of the IROS Workshop on Agri-Food Robotics: Learning from Industry 4.0 and Moving into the Future, Vancouver, BC, Canada."}],"container-title":["Robotics"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2218-6581\/6\/4\/24\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T18:46:21Z","timestamp":1760208381000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2218-6581\/6\/4\/24"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,30]]},"references-count":14,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2017,12]]}},"alternative-id":["robotics6040024"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/robotics6040024","relation":{},"ISSN":["2218-6581"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2218-6581","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2017,9,30]]}}}