{
  "abstract": "Autonomous navigation is essential for orchard robots performing spraying, weeding, inspection, harvesting, and transport, yet semi-structured orchards combine repeatable tree-row geometry with canopy occlusion, uneven illumination, weak road boundaries, terrain variation, and intermittent global positioning. This review examines orchard visual navigation through a control-oriented chain of scene information, perception and localization, navigation-reference construction, motion execution, and closed-loop evaluation. Particular emphasis is placed on orchard-specific interfaces: repeated row geometry can stabilize reference extraction but can also create perceptual ambiguity; canopy occlusion can simultaneously degrade visual features and GNSS availability; and headland turning requires explicit switching among row following, turning, relocalization, and task resumption. Passable areas, tree-row/canopy structure, and obstacle/end-of-row semantics are compared according to the control variables they generate, including drivable corridors, lateral and heading errors, curvature, safety clearance, event states, and tracking targets. Traditional vision, deep-learning detection and segmentation, depth vision, visual SLAM, multi-sensor fusion, and path-tracking control are synthesized in terms of operating conditions, failure modes, and downstream control effects. The review further analyzes perception-to-control error propagation, end-to-end latency, cross-season generalization, and the mismatch between image metrics and field navigation performance. A unified perception-representation-localization-planning-control-evaluation framework and full-chain benchmark protocol are presented.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "School of Agricultural Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China.",
    "Key Laboratory of Plant Protection Engineering, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China."
  ],
  "article_type": "review article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 5,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Yunfei Wang",
      "orcid": "0009-0009-3767-4838"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Xiang Dong"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Zhenlei Zhang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Zhihao Zhang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Weidong Jia"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/30n6a00ryvtb2.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3390/s26206402",
  "fulltext_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13709170",
  "id": "30n6a00ryvtb2",
  "issns": [
    "1424-8220"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42944266",
  "language": "eng",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "1110|Smart Agriculture and AI"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221327870",
  "pdf_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13709170?pdf=render",
  "pmcid": "PMC13709170",
  "pmid": "42944266",
  "published": "2026-10-10",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/30n6a00ryvtb2.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:22:24Z",
      "native_id": "MED:42944266",
      "source": "europepmc",
      "url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42944266"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "openalex:1110|Smart Agriculture and AI",
      "subfield": "plant-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Visual Perception and Autonomous Navigation Control for Orchard Robots: From Scene Understanding to Closed-Loop Motion Execution.",
  "title_text": "Visual Perception and Autonomous Navigation Control for Orchard Robots: From Scene Understanding to Closed-Loop Motion Execution.",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:22:24Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/30n6a00ryvtb2",
  "venue": "Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)",
  "versions": []
}