Robotics for Crop Pollination: Recent Advances and Future Direction

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is great interest in alternative pollination strategies for crop production in the face of climate change and perennial threats to the traditional pollination mechanisms. This review explores the potential of robotic pollination as a promising solution to these challenges affecting crop fertilization, agricultural sustainability, and global food production. We comprehensively examine recent advances in robotic pollination systems that integrate artificial intelligence, machine vision, robotics, and precision sensing to supplement or complement conventional insect‐mediated pollination. The review first examines aerial robotic pollination, beginning with insect‐scale aerial robots, their technological evolution from biomimetic flapping‐wing platforms toward autonomous operation, and the key challenges that continue to limit their practical deployment. It then reviews unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for robotic pollination, highlighting their progression from broad aerial pollen dispersal to precision‐oriented pollination, followed by a synthesis of current limitations and future research priorities for UAV‐based robotic pollination. The review subsequently discusses ground‐based robotic pollination systems, emphasizing their perception, navigation, and pollen delivery strategies together with the technical challenges associated with field deployment. Beyond individual robotic platforms, we examine the cost, scalability, and commercial development of robotic pollination technologies and discuss emerging industrial efforts that are accelerating adoption in modern agriculture. Finally, we present a future roadmap for robotic crop pollination, outlining critical research directions in autonomy, perception, precision pollen delivery, multirobot coordination, ecological compatibility, and system‐level intelligence required to transition robotic pollination from experimental prototypes to commercially viable agricultural solutions. Overall, this review highlights robotic pollination as a practical, intelligent, and environmentally sustainable technology for modern agriculture, capable of enhancing crop pollination resilience, mitigating pollinator decline and labor shortages, and supporting long‐term agricultural productivity and global food security.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Field Robotics, 2026 · DOI ↗