Evolution of smart farming for the European Green Deal: A review of IoT, artificial intelligence and robotics in sustainable precision agriculture

Abstract Smart farming is constitutes a means of facilitating the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy. However, credible sustainability results require measurable and validatable indicators, verifiable data and automation that is reliable even under field conditions. This overview study presents developments in IoT-based sensing, artificial intelligence-based analysis and autonomous robotics, and links them to EU target areas. The peer-reviewed studies (2000–2025) were retrieved from the Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases and supplemented with key EU legal and strategic documents. The article proposes a policy-driven digital agroecological management (PDAM) framework that establishes adaptable indicators based on past trends in EU targets (pesticides, nutrients, soil, biodiversity and climate) and then develops a system of perception-analysis-implementation based on these indicators. The most effective tools support GNSS-based machine control, variable rate application, and remote sensing, while AI-based decision support tools, autonomous weed control, and digital twin field validation are still weaker. Interoperability, data governance, cybersecurity and safety regulation emerge as critical scaling constraints for auditable smart farming systems.