Nobuyoshi Taguchi

Industrial Technology Center of Okayama Prefecture

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Nobuyoshi Taguchi is a pioneering researcher in agricultural robotics, with a focused expertise in automated harvesting systems for specialty crops. His work directly addresses Japan’s critical challenge of an aging and shrinking agricultural workforce by developing intelligent machines that can replace manual labor. Taguchi’s major contributions center on the design and integration of robotic systems for asparagus harvesting, a notoriously delicate and selective task. He has developed complete harvesting robots that combine custom end-effectors, robotic arms, and mobile platforms with advanced sensing technologies. A key innovation is his use of 3-D vision sensors and laser range finders for precise detection and positioning of asparagus spears, enabling the robot to identify harvest-ready candidates by height and grasp them without damage. His most cited work, “Accurate Position Detecting during Asparagus Spear Harvesting using a Laser Sensor” (2013, 19 citations), along with his 2014 paper on the harvesting robot (18 citations), demonstrates the practical impact of his approach. Through these achievements, Taguchi has laid essential groundwork for the future of automated specialty-crop harvesting, offering a viable solution to labor shortages in agriculture.