Agricultural and Life Sciences (IFAS)
Agricultural Robotics and Mechatronics Group
Led by Tom Burks · Agricultural and Biological Engineering
What we study
The Burks Lab develops robots and automated systems for agriculture, like citrus harvesting and disease detection. They use sensors, computers, and machine vision to improve productivity and quality in farming.
What working here is like
- Fieldwork
- Computational
- Building & testing
- Plants
- Coding helps
- Projects
- 3
- Papers
- 3
Current projects
Fruit Disease Detection using machine vision
A mobile system detects citrus greening (HLB) in fields using optical sensors.
Autonomous green house sprayer vehicle
Designs a self-driving vehicle that moves through greenhouses and sprays pesticides on its own, using sensors and computer control.
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Automated citrus harvesting
Builds a robot that picks citrus fruit without damaging the fruit or the tree, combining sensors, machine vision and automated control.
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- AI-driven real-time weed detection and robotic smart spraying for optimised performance and operational speed in vegetable production
2025 · Biosystems Engineering
- Design and evaluation of a PI-controlled robotic smart sprayer for precision herbicide applications with multi-nozzle integration
2025 · Precision Agriculture
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- Smart spraying technologies for precision weed management: A review
2023 · Smart Agricultural Technology
Reviews smart sprayers using machine vision and AI to improve weed management in farming.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Tom Burks hasn't set up this page yet. You can also look them up in the UF directory (search “Tom Burks”).