Cunjia Liu

Cunjia Liu

Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems

AIGreenBots: Artificial Intelligence and Sensor-Fusion Systems in Sustainable Robotics for Precision Agriculture

Jun, 2025 - Jun, 2029, funded by EPSRC / Horizon Europe MSCA-DN (EP/Z536325/1)

AIGreenBots is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network (MSCA-DN) focused on developing the next generation of AI-enabled agricultural robots for precision agriculture and digital farming. The network combines doctoral training, interdisciplinary research, secondments, and collaboration between universities, research centres, and industry partners across Europe.

For the UK participation, the project is supported through the EPSRC Horizon Europe Guarantee award at Loughborough University.

AIGreenBots logo

Overview

AIGreenBots brings together expertise in:

  • agricultural robotic platforms,
  • robotic perception and sensor fusion,
  • reliable artificial intelligence and machine learning,
  • decision-making under uncertainty,
  • safety, regulation, and real-world deployment of agricultural robots.

The project is designed not only as a research programme, but also as a doctoral training environment for developing researchers who can work across robotics, AI, sensing, and agricultural technology.

Research in AIGreenBots at Loughborough

At Loughborough, our contribution focuses on collaborative environment sensing and intelligent perception for agriculture applications. More broadly, our research interests within the network include:

  • multi-sensor perception for agricultural robots,
  • collaborative sensing and information-driven autonomy,
  • localisation, mapping, and scene understanding for field robots,
  • robust AI methods for agricultural environments,
  • perception systems that support safe and reliable field deployment.

This work aligns strongly with the wider AIGreenBots agenda on sensor fusion, perception, AI, and real-world agricultural robotics.

Doctoral training and collaboration

AIGreenBots is structured as a doctoral network in which researchers are trained through:

  • interdisciplinary research projects,
  • network-wide technical and transferable-skills training,
  • secondments with academic and non-academic partners,
  • exposure to practical use cases, infrastructures, and industrial perspectives.

The network provides an environment in which doctoral candidates can gain both strong scientific foundations and experience relevant to the development of market-ready agricultural robotics systems.

Loughborough team

  • Prof Cunjia Liu — Principal Investigator (UK EPSRC guarantee award)
  • Dr Matthew Coombes — Co-Investigator
  • Prof Wen-Hua Chen — Co-Investigator
  • Mr Yuchuan Jin — Doctoral candidate

Within the doctoral network, the Loughborough-hosted doctoral candidate topic is:

  • DC11: Information theoretic based collaborative environment sensing for agriculture applications

Research themes across the network

The project addresses a broad set of themes across agricultural robotics, including:

  • user-centred agricultural robot design and development,
  • robotic perception and sensor-fusion technology,
  • reliable AI and machine learning,
  • autonomous decision-making,
  • safety, validation, and deployment considerations.

More information