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19th International meeting GiESCO 31 May-5
June2015 Pech Rouge-Montpellier
VINEROBOT ON-THE-GO VINEYARD MONITORING WITH NON
INVASIVE SENSORS

Maria P. DIAGO1, Francisco ROVIRA-MÁS2, Jose
BLASCO3, Verónica SAIZ-RUBIO2, Enrico FAENZI4,
Sébastien ÉVAIN5, Sébastien LABAILS6, Manfred
STOLL7, Mathias SCHEIDWEILER7, Christophe
MILLOT8, Esther CAMPOS-GÓMEZ9, Javier
TARDAGUILA1 1Instituto de Ciencias de la Vid y
del Vino (CSIC, UR, Gobierno de La Rioja). Madre
de Dios, 51 (26006) Logroño. La Rioja. Spain
2Agricultural Robotics Laboratory, Universidad
Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n 3F,
Valencia 46022, Spain 3Centro de Agroingeniería,
Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias
(IVIA), Moncada, Valencia, Spain 4SIVIS SRL,
Viale Toselli 13, 53100, Siena, Italy 6FORCE-A,
Centre Universitaire Paris Sud Bât 503, 91893
ORSAY Cedex France 6Société Coopérative Agricole
des Vignerons de Buzet, 56 Avenue des Côtes de
Buzet, BP17, 47160 Buzet s/Baïse, France
7Department of General and Organic Viticulture
Hochschule Geisenheim University (HSGM), D-65366
Geisenheim, Germany8WALL-YE SARL, Rue Doyenne 5,
7100, Macon, France 9Avanzare Innovacion
Tecnologica S.L., Avd. Lentiscares 4-6. Polígono
Lentiscares (26370), Navarrete. La Rioja. Spain.
Corresponding author M.P. Diago, 34941299737,
Fax [phone], Email mpaz.diago.santamaria_at_gm
ail.com 
Results
Aim
The aim of the VineRobot 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)
grapevines vegetative growth, 2) nutritional
status and 4) grape composition in order to
optimize the vineyard management and improve
grape composition and wine quality. The integral
monitoring of the vineyard over the entire season
is intended, by placing the ground robot along
the vineyards.
The main potential impact for end-users involves
several positive aspects i) end-users will draw
clear economic and environmental advantages from
the scouting robot as they will optimize vineyard
inputs and management costs and ii) the fast and
versatile display of the crop maps makes the
robot a flexible and powerful decision-support
tool for making educated decisions based on
measurable data. The immediate display of
valuable information on the own robot and
alternatively on smartphone-like devices remotely
operated will promote advanced business
operations.

Figure 1. Overall concept of the VineRobot
project.
Materials Methods
The work focuses on two working areas 1. Robot
design and construction, and 2. Development of
crop sensing units. The first prototype of the
VineRobot has been designed, built, and is
capable of autonomously navigating the field at
ease (see navigation strategy in Figure 2). The
work on the bio-sensing capabilities of the robot
has progressed in four directions 1. A vision
system based on RGB and IR perception is being
developed to identify and track grape berries
on-the-go 2. Fundamental research on NIR
spectrometry has been conducted to measure water
stress alternatively to thermography and some
aspects of grape composition 3. The FAsense
(ForceA, Orsay, France), a new fluorescence
sensor to detect the level of anthocyanins in
grapes and 4. To assess the grapevines
vegetative and nutritional status.
Figure 3. Images of the first prototype of the
VineRobot.
Conclusions
This project deals with the fields of precision
viticulture and robotics and is also a novel
technological challenge since it represents a
large step forward in agricultural robotics and
the application of advanced non-invasive proximal
sensing to provide reliable, fast and objective
information to state-of-the-art vineyards.
Figure 2. Initial navigation strategy for
theVineRobot.
http//www.vinerobot.eu/
The work leading to these results has received
funding from the European Union under grant
agreement nº610953.
The VineRobot project deals with the fields of
precision viticulture and robotics and is a novel
technological challenge since it represents a
large step forward in agricultural robotics and
the application of advanced non-invasive proximal
sensing to provide reliable, fast and objective
information to state-of-the-art vineyards.
Therefore, the robot holds potential for
viticulturists and winemakers in making better
and more precise management decisions.