The aim of this project is the design, development, and deployment of a novel use-case agricultural robot under the scope of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV), and equipped with several non-invasive sensing technologies to monitor: 1) of grape yield, 2) vegetative growth, 3) Water stress and 4) Grape composition in order to optimize the vineyard management and improve grape composition and wine quality.\n\nThe use of UGVs to monitor vineyard physiological parameters and grape composition has several advantages over simple hand-held devices for manual sampling and over UAV.\n\nUGVs may provide key information regarding vineyard physiology and water stress, grape composition, and pests and diseases' incidence much faster than manual solutions and at higher resolution, in a more flexible way, and lower cost than aerial scouting carried out by drones or planes.\n\nThe scope covers the integral monitoring of vineyards, over the entire season, by placing a ground robot along the vineyards (endowed with artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques).\nThe final users will receive updated in mobile application (app).\n\nThe proposed use-case agricultural robots (where key proximal sensing technologies will be implemented) will allow revolutionary and conclusive decision making to optimize vineyard management and to drive agronomical fundamental decisions according to grape yield estimation, plant growth monitoring, water status, and berry composition assessment. UGV proposed will incorporate an integrated system that includes machine vision, thermography and fluorescence-based sensors. Canopy images and data acquisition processes will be executed in real time through customized algorithms to compose specific production maps.
Project partners:
UNIVERSIDAD DE LA RIOJA
FORCE-A SA
UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA
AVANZARE INNOVACION TECNOLOGICA SL
WALL-YE SARL
SIVIS SRL
Forschungsanstalt Geisenheim
LES VIGNERONS DE BUZET SOCIETE COOPERATIVE AGRICOLE