About Me
I am a robotics engineer and researcher working with TRIC Robotics , and focusing on agricultural robotics, automation, and deep learning-based perception techniques. I am proud of working with our teams to take cutting-edge AI technologies to our robotic system and data management system, enhancing automation’s robustness and smarter farming applications!
Before that, I studied Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Georgia from Aug 2021 to Dec 2022. Then, I graduated from Agricultural and Biological Engineering at University of Folorida in December 2024. During the past years, I was a graduate research assistant in BSAIL Research Group, working with Dr.Changying Li .
💻 Research Interests
- Agricultural Robotics
- Computer vision and deep learning
- High-Throughput Phenotyping
📖 Educations
- 2023.01 - 2024.12, Master degree, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Folorida, Gainesville, Folorida, USA
- 2021.01 - 2022.12, Graduate research Assistant, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
- 2016.09 - 2020.06, Undergraduate student, Mechanical Engineering, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, Yangling, Shaanxi, China.
🔥 News
- 2025.03: 🎉🎉 New publication “Visual navigation and crop mapping of a phenotyping robot MARS-PhenoBot in simulation” has published on Smart Agricultural Technology!
- 2025.02: 🎉🎉 New publication “Robotic blueberry phenotyping using customized BerryNet” has published on Computers and Electronics in Agriculture!
- 2025.01: 🎉🎉 Excited to join TRIC Robotics as robotic enngineer for robotic pest and disease control!
- 2024.12: 🎉🎉 Graduated and received the Master degree from Agricultral and Boilogical Enfinnering, University of Frorida (“Post” )!
- 2024.12: 🎉🎉 The paper “Digital Twin/MARS‐CycleGAN” has published on Journal of Field Robotics!
- 2024.07: 🎉🎉 Presented Plot-scale Peanut Yield estimation project in ASABE 2024 !
- 2024.07: 🎉🎉 won the first prize in AOCABFE student paper competition!
- 2024.07: 🎉🎉 won the service and leadership award in ASABE AOCABFE (Student chair during Aguest 2023 - Auguest 2024)!
- 2023.10: 🎉🎉 Presented Pheno-SAM project in IROS 2023 Agrobotic Workshop !
- 2023.07: 🎉🎉 won the second prize in AOCABFE student oral presentation competition!
- 2023.07: 🎉🎉 Presented robotic Blueberry phenotyping project in ASABE 2023 !!
- 2023.04: 🎉🎉 Presented PhenoBot with visual navigation in AGAI conference 2023!
- 2023.01: 🎉🎉 Joined BSAIL Research Group ， Agricultural and Biological Engineering department, University of Florida!
💻 Projects
Robotic Crop Phenotyping
ASABE 2024
Zhengkun Li, Rui Xu, Changying Li*, Barry Tillman, Nino Brown
- Robotic plot-scale image stitching based on LoFTR
- Improved real-time RTDETR for peanut pod detection
- SHAI inference for large-resolution Image
- Peanut Yield comparison based on plot-scale counting
ASABE 2023
Blueberry Yield Estimation Through Multi-View Imagery with YOLOv8 Object Detection
Zhengkun Li, Changying Li*, Rui Xu, Patricio Munoz
Journal Conference Poster Presentation Github
- Multi-view mobile platform for in-field blueberry phenotyping
- YOLOv8 dedtector for blueberry detection
- Blueberry yield evaluation with multi-view regression
Sim2Real Robotic Transfer: from simulation to reality
2023
Dt/mars-cyclegan: Improved object detection for mars phenotyping robot
Liu, David, Zhengkun Li, Zihao Wu, Changying Li*
- Digital twins for PhenoBot and agricultural field
- DT-CycleGAN: generative agricultural field images
- Zero-shot transfer to the real world dataset
ASABE 2022
Zhengkun Li, Rui Xu, Changying Li*, and Longsheng Fu
Journal Conference Poster Presentation
- develop a phenotyping robot to perform field phenotyping tasks
- design a vision-based navigation algorithm and evaluate its efficacy
- explore the field mapping pipeline for 3D crop mapping in the field
Previous Projects
Course Project 2022
Innovation trainning 2018-2020
Agrobot competition 2017-2018
Agriclture Harvesting Robot Competition
Xing Liang, Zhengkun Li, Yingchao Peng, Gangying Shi* and Yan Long*
- Wheeled base control with STM32 controller: line following control
- Mechanical design for 5 DoF manipulator
- OpenMV Board for fruit detection
📝 Publications & Conferences
- Li, Zhengkun, Rui Xu, Changying Li, and Longsheng Fu. “Visual Navigation and Crop Mapping of a Phenotyping Robot MARS-PhenoBot in Simulation.” Smart Agricultural Technology (2025): 100910.
- Li, Zhengkun, Rui Xu, Changying Li, Patricio Munoz, Fumiomi Takeda, and Bruno Leme. “In-field blueberry fruit phenotyping with a MARS-PhenoBot and customized BerryNet.” Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 232 (2025): 110057.
- Liu, David, Zhengkun Li, Zihao Wu, and Changying Li. “Digital Twin/MARS‐CycleGAN: Enhancing Sim‐to‐Real Crop/Row Detection for MARS Phenotyping Robot Using Synthetic Images.” Journal of Field Robotics (2024).
- Zhengkun Li, Rui Xu, Changying Li, Barry Tillman, and Nino Brown. “Robotic Plot-scale Peanut Counting and Yield Estimation using LoFTR-based Image Stitching and Improved RT-DETR.” In 2024 ASABE Annual International Meeting, p. 1. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, 2024.
- Liu, David, Zhengkun Li, Zihao Wu, and Changying Li. “Dt/mars-cyclegan: Improved object detection for mars phenotyping robot.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.12787 (2023).
- Zhengkun Li, and Changying Li. “Robotic Vegetable Production.” In Encyclopedia of Smart Agriculture Technologies, pp. 1-12. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023.
- Zhengkun Li, Changying Li, and Patricio Munoz. “Blueberry Yield Estimation Through Multi-View Imagery with YOLOv8 Object Detection.” In 2023 ASABE Annual International Meeting, p. 1. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, 2023.
- Zhengkun Li, Rui Xu, Changying Li, and Longsheng Fu. “Simulation of an In-field Phenotyping Robot: System Design, Vision-based Navigation and Field Mapping.” In 2022 ASABE Annual International Meeting, p. 1. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, 2022.
- Liu, Li, Zhengkun Li, Yufei Lan, Yinggang Shi, and Yongjie Cui. “Design of a tomato classifier based on machine vision.” PloS one 14, no. 7 (2019): e0219803.
- Liu, Li, Xinyu Li, Zhengkun Li, and Yinggang Shi. “Application of electronic nose in detection of fresh vegetables freezing time considering odor identification technology.” Chemical engineering transactions 68 (2018): 265-270.
Patents
- Zhengkun Li, Li Jianxing, Liu Qunming, etc. A fruit sorting and grabbing mechanism: China, 201821703500.1 [P]. May 14, 2019
- Zhengkun Li, Liu Qunming, LAN Yufei, etc. An automatic fruit grading system: China, 201821703511.X [P]. July 5, 2019
🎖 Honors and Awards
- 2024.07, won the Service and Leadership Award from the AOCABFE
- 2024.07, won the first prize in the AOCABFE Student Paper competition
- 2023.07, won the second prize in the AOCABFE Student Paper Presentation competition
- 2023.01-present, Research Assistantship, University of Florida
- 2022.07, won the first prize in the AOCABFE student Paper writing competition
- 2021.01-2022.12, Research Assistantship, University of Georgia
- 2018.12, won the first prize at Intelligent Agricultural Equipment Innovation (National level)
- 2018.08, won the first prize at China Robot Competition (National level) - Harvesting robot Competition
- 2016.09-2020.6, China National Inspiration Scholarship, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University (Top 5%)
- 2016.09-2020.6, First-order Major scholarship, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University (Top 10%)
💬 Leaderships
- 2023.08-2024.08, Chair of Student Activities Committee in Assiciation of OVerseas Chinese Agricultural, Biological and Food Engineering（AOCABFE ）
- 2018.06-2019.12, Chair of Intelligent Agricultural Equipment Student Club.
💻 Professional Memberships
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE)
- American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE)
- Association of Overseas Chinese Agricultural, Biological, and Food Engineers (AOCABFE )