GRAPE: Ground robot for vineyard monitoring and protection

Abstract

Precision agriculture is a key topic in robotics. The incursion of robots in the agriculture domain has become a reality in recent years. Nowadays, robotics is not only used for crop monitoring like for instance the use of aerial robots for growth control. Robots are increasingly playing key role in the daily life of the farmers and producers. Heavy tasks like pruning, seeding or even precise harvesting are the target topics of the robotics in agriculture. In this paper we present the ongoing work of GRAPE project, founded by Echord++ program from European Commission. GRAPE (Ground Robot for vineyArd Monitoring and ProtEction) consists in the automatic pheromone dispenser distribution for matting disruption in vineyards using an autonomous ground robot equipped with a robotic arm. GRAPE focuses on developing the on-board intelligence and the required algorithms, using commercial hardware. The consortium of the project is composed by Eurecat Technology Center [5], University Politecnico di Milano [13] and Vitirover [18].