Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42197986›Full record

ArticleSensors (Basel, Switzerland)2026

Tomato Ripeness Detection and Localization Based on the Intelligent Inspection Robot Platform.

Xinrui Li, Long Liang, Yubo Liu, Jingxia Lu

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Xinrui LiCollege of Smart Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 211800, China.
Long LiangCollege of Smart Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 211800, China.
Yubo LiuThe Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Jingxia LuCollege of Smart Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 211800, China.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The field inspection and ripeness detection of tomatoes in China remain heavily dependent on manual labor, while existing robotic solutions often exhibit limited functionality, poor environmental adaptability, prohibitive hardware costs, and unstable positioning accuracy. To address these limitations, this study proposes an intelligent tomato inspection robot that seamlessly integrates real-time ripeness recognition with precise spatial localization. Built upon a Raspberry Pi 5 core controller, the robot employs a lightweight, layered modular architecture designed to flexibly navigate complex agricultural environments. A comprehensive, multi-dimensional image dataset of tomato ripeness was constructed to train a three-category detection model based on the YOLOv8n architecture. Following 413 training epochs, the model demonstrated exceptional performance, achieving an overall mAP@0.5 of 87.8% and an mAP@0.5:0.95 of 72.7% on the held-out test dataset. In field inspections, the system achieved detection precisions of 82.22% for immature tomatoes, 92.66% for half-ripened tomatoes, and 100% for fully ripe tomatoes, successfully identifying all ripe tomatoes and satisfying the practical demands of field inspection. Furthermore, the integration of an Ultra-Wideband positioning system yielded an overall Root Mean Square Error of 0.231 m, successfully confining positioning errors to within 0.24 m to fully satisfy the stringent localization demands of crop-level inspection. Field evaluations confirmed that under optimal configurations, the robot can efficiently inspect a 50-m planting row in 10 min (±1 min) and maintains a continuous operational battery life of 2 h (±10 min). The core contribution of this work is the system-level integration and optimization of technologies for greenhouse agriculture. This integrated design achieves low hardware cost and high deployment flexibility, addressing longstanding challenges of labor-intensive inspection and delayed harvesting, and delivering a practical solution for intelligent tomato plantation management.

Indexed as

intelligent inspection robotlightweight designprecision agriculturetomato ripeness detectionUWBYOLOv8n

Identifiers

PMID42197986
PMCPMC13211214

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.