An European research consortium that is made up of Spanish, French, Italian and German universities and companies are currently looking into developing what they call the VineRobot, which will be an unmanned robot that comes with a slew of non-invasive advanced sensors and artificial intelligence systems in order to help us humans better manage our vineyards. The VineRobot will hopefully be able to move around, gathering vital statistics and deliver reliable, fast and objective information on the state of the vineyards, ranging from the likes of vegetative development, water status, production and grape composition.
One of the biggest advantages of this particular project would be the availability of a large quantity of automatically obtained data, and just about any user can interpret such data without having to go through a really steep and serious learning curve. Not only that, all of the information gathered can be transmitted wirelessly, now how about that?
Project researcher Javier Tardaguila shared, “Robotics and precision agriculture provide producers with powerful tools in order to improve the competitiveness of their farms. Robots like the one we are developing will not substitute the vine grower, but will facilitate their work, so they can avoid the hardest jobs in field. It has several advantages including the ability to predict grape production or its degree of ripeness in order to immediately assess its quality without touching it.”