Servo - March 2014

unproductive young shoots are labor-intensive — all the while collecting valuable data on the health and vigor of the soil, fruit, and vine stocks.

The Wall-Ye shown in

Figure 16 is the brainchild of Christophe Millot who got his inspiration after visiting a vineyard in the southeast region of France. A frustrated winegrower, Denis Fetzmann needed to have the leaves pruned because the clusters were too big, but they couldn't find workers in the summer vacation season. Millot told him he would make him a robot.

It took three years — much longer than he expected — even working weekends and nights. Millot's greatest challenge was to make the cameras understand what they were seeing and how to interpret the camera's images. The robots are made in France, but interest from growers in New Zealand to California are making Wall-Ye a viable product.

Most articles about vineyard robots talk about 'grape picking' versions. It turns out that actually the harvesting of the grapes is a far simpler task that a novice vineyard worker can perform. Pruning is a more precise undertaking in that the worker must make decisions on the health of the individual plant, and make choices on where and what to cut back.

Novice pruners have to be trained each year, so hopefully the robot can learn the process and the information can be transferred to new robots instantly. Pruning 600 vines per day is not an easy task for a human, but a robot can work longer hours with no time off.

Millot is in the white shirt behind the 44 pound Wall-Ye in Figure 17. The 50 cm tall by 60 cm long robot presently costs about $32,000 and has built-in GPS localization, six imaging cameras, and two arms.

Millot states: "Wall-Ye draws on tracking technology, artificial intelligence, and mapping to move from vine to vine, recognize plant features, capture and record data on health, bugs, disease, memorize each vine, synchronize six cameras, and guide its arms to wield tools. It also has an in-built security mechanism that is designed to thwart would-be robot snatchers.

It navigates by GPS but also recognizes each plant individually, and can carry out special instructions or follow up on previous work. If it finds itself in a non-designated vineyard, the robot won't start. It also has a gyroscope so it knows if it's been lifted off the ground. If that happens, the hard drive self-destructs and the robot sends a message to the winegrower: Help!"