Advances in Binocular Stereo Vision-Driven 3D Perception and Intelligent Analysis Methods for Agriculture

Binocular stereo vision is a low-cost and scalable 3D perception technology that shows strong potential in agricultural phenotyping and smart agriculture. By estimating depth from multi-view RGB images, it enables non-contact, high-precision sensing of crop structure, canopy morphology, growth dynamics, and livestock traits, providing essential support for digital and intelligent agricultural production. With recent advances in deep learning-based stereo matching, multimodal sensor fusion, and 3D reconstruction, its robustness and accuracy in complex field environments have been significantly improved. This paper systematically reviews recent progress in agricultural applications of binocular stereo vision, covering system architectures, traditional and deep learning-based stereo matching methods, point cloud reconstruction techniques, and emerging supervision strategies such as 3D Gaussian splatting. It further summarizes key applications, including high-throughput phenotyping, fruit localization and robotic harvesting, weed detection and precision spraying, autonomous navigation, and livestock body condition assessment, highlighting its role in multi-task agricultural perception systems. Finally, the paper discusses major challenges, including low-texture matching difficulty, occlusions in complex environments, cross-domain generalization, real-time lightweight deployment, and limited dataset availability. Future directions are outlined in foundation model-based visual perception, self- and weakly supervised learning, multimodal fusion, and edge-efficient model design, aiming to support large-scale deployment in smart agriculture.