Digital twins as decision-support tools for automation in agriculture: A case study on robotic vaccination
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Agriculture faces increasing pressure to improve efficiency, ensure animal welfare, and reduce dependence on manual labour, yet traditional operations often lag in adopting Industry 4.0 and 5.0 solutions. Digital technologies, par- ticularly digital twins, offer a transformative approach by enabling virtual representation, real-time simulation, predictive analytics, and performance validation prior to physical deployment, thereby providing a cost-effective proof of concept. This paper introduces a framework that not only show- cases a robotic vaccination system for feedlots but also establishes a proof-of- concept pathway to demonstrate the potential value and practicality of such technologies for agriculture. One of the latest state-of-the-art development environments, NVIDIA Isaac Sim, provides a robust platform for building these digital twins, allowing robotic systems to be tested and optimized in realistic, dynamic environments. Using this environment, we outline a robotic vaccination system that combines a robotic arm-based injection mechanism with reinforcement learning agents and a Detectron2 deep learning model these systems allow for precise neck muscle segmentation and accurate vac- cine site targeting. The system was evaluated on two robotic platforms: Isaac Sim’s built-in Franka Emika Panda arm and a customized manipulator, which may offer realistic and cost-effective solutions for feedlots. Simulation results demonstrate achievable positional accuracy, robust control, and reliable task execution across both platforms. This digital twin-based framework reduces reliance on early-stage physical prototyping, enhances safety, measures op- erational efficiency, and serves as a decision-support tool, highlighting the critical role of digital simulation in enabling practical, scalable automation in modern agriculture.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".