Bionic technology and deep learning in agricultural engineering: Current status and future prospects

As one of the most important production activity of mankind, agriculture plays an important role in social development. With the development of science and technology, agricultural technology has constantly been explored and researched. By learning and imitating the characteristics of creatures in nature, bionic technology has been applied to the improvement of agricultural machinery and farm implements. In recent years, as an extension of bionic technology, machine vision and deep learning have been widely used in agricultural production. The application of bionic technology and deep learning in agricultural engineering are reviewed in this study. In traditional agricultural engineering, many bionic farming tools were developed to reduce soil resistance and multiple bionic cutting cutters were designed to improve work efficiency and save energy. Machine vision and neural networks were widely used in crop classification, sorting, phenological period recognition and navigation. Deep learning methods can promote the intelligentization of agricultural engineering and has obvious advantages in crop classification, disease and pest identification, growth status evaluation and autonomous robots. Agricultural engineering that integrates bionic technology, machine vision and deep learning will develop toward more automation and intelligence. © 2021 Chunlei Tu, Jinxia Li, Xingsong Wang, Shen Cheng and Jie Li.