Kenji Imou

About

Kenji Imou is a pioneering researcher in agricultural robotics and autonomous systems, whose work sits at the intersection of machine vision, intelligent navigation, and precision agriculture. His most influential contribution, a 2009 review of agricultural vehicle autonomous guidance (160 citations), established a foundational conceptual framework for the field, systematically analyzing navigation sensors and computational methods that continue to shape research directions today. Building on this foundation, Imou has made significant advances in robotic harvesting, developing sophisticated computer vision systems for strawberry detection and localization — employing techniques ranging from HOG descriptors to coupled YOLO/Mask R-CNN architectures — to address the pressing challenge of agricultural labor shortages. His navigation research extends beyond crop fields, encompassing GNSS-free orchard mowing robots, Visual-Inertial RGB-D SLAM for differential wheeled robots, and even an innovative electric robot boat for aquatic weed management. Imou's work consistently bridges theoretical innovation and practical deployment, tackling real-world constraints like obstacle avoidance, fruit occlusion, and varied operating environments. With research spanning over a decade and accumulating hundreds of citations, his contributions have meaningfully advanced the automation of labor-intensive agricultural tasks, offering transformative solutions for modern farming systems.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Review of research on agricultural vehicle autonomous guidance

   160 citations · 2009
2. 2
   Two-stage approach for detecting slightly overlapping strawberries using HOG descriptor

   57 citations · 2013
3. 3
   The development of autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance for a robotic mower using machine vision technique

   55 citations · 2019
4. 4
   Recognition and localization of strawberries from 3D binocular cameras for a strawberry picking robot using coupled YOLO/Mask R-CNN

   31 citations · 2022
5. 5
   Visual-Inertial RGB-D SLAM With Encoders for a Differential Wheeled Robot

   20 citations · 2021
6. 6
   Development of a Small Electric Robot Boat for Mowing Aquatic Weeds

   8 citations · 2021
7. 7
   Autonomous Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance in an Orchard Using Machine Vision Techniques for a Robotic Mower

   6 citations · 2022
8. 8
   Collision-free control of a strawberry-harvesting robot by recognition of immature fruits

   6 citations · 2013
9. 9
   Landmark direction angle estimation based on omnidirectional image

   5 citations · 2010
10. 10
    Detection of Persimmon Posture by a Convolutional Neural Network for Fully Automating the Peeling Process

    4 citations · 2022

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links