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About

Mino Sportelli is a researcher at the forefront of agricultural robotics and precision turf management, with a focus on developing autonomous solutions for both crop production and landscape maintenance. His most cited work centers on two key areas: the design of robotic grippers for vegetable transplanting and the evaluation of autonomous mowers for turf and weed control. In his 2021 study on feeding grippers for plug transplanters—cited 27 times—Sportelli advanced the automation of vegetable production systems, a critical step toward reducing labor in horticulture. He has also made significant contributions to autonomous mowing, demonstrating through multiple studies (with 16 and 12 citations, respectively) that robotic mowers operating on random trajectories can effectively maintain tall fescue and warm-season turfgrasses at standard cutting heights. Notably, his 2021 investigation into autonomous mowers for weed control in globe artichoke fields (9 citations) highlights the potential of simplified robotic systems for agricultural weeding, bypassing the need for complex crop-detection algorithms. Sportelli’s work bridges engineering and agronomy, offering practical, data-driven insights into the performance and limitations of autonomous field robots, and his findings are shaping the next generation of labor-efficient, sustainable farming and turf management technologies.