Sensing, smart and sustainable technologies for Agri-Food 4.0

Abstract Currently, the agri-food sector takes advantage of modern machinery, tools and emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) that consider the Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities. These implementations have given way to a new era of agri-food production called ‘Agri-Food 4.0’, where automation, connectivity, digitalisation, the use of renewable energies and the efficient use of resources are predominant in this sector. In this article, the ‘sensing, smart and sustainable (S3)’ concept is applied to develop new technologies that can respond to current challenges of agri-food industries. Therefore, this work focuses on describing how S3 technologies for the agri-food sector can be developed using a systematic process for new product development (NPD). The main objective of this work is to fill the gap vis-a-vis the current lack of design roadmaps that permit the development of this new generation of products in the context of agri-food 4.0. Finally, this work presents case studies of S3 technologies applied to the agri-food sector: an intelligent greenhouse, a sun tracker trajectory, an hexapod robot for field monitoring and an agricultural drone.