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5 8 V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T | J u l y - A u g 2 016 w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m spraying. "Different sensors gather data, which is analyzed by our soft- ware to produce reports that can be used as decision making tools to manage the vineyard, vine stock by vine stock," says de la Fouchardière. According to de la Fouchardière, the company will deliver as many as 100 Vitirovers in 2016 to clients in Medoc, St. Emillion, Germany, England and Belgium, and is seeing demand from winegrowers in Cali- fornia, Italy, Spain and South Africa. OPTIMIZING VINEYARD MANAGEMENT In Rioja, Spain, Professor Javier Tardaguila, head of the Televitis Group at the University of La Rioja, and a group of eight partners from France, Italy, Germany and Spain, are in the final year of their three- year project to commercialize the VineRobot. Described as a multi-sensor scouting robot developed for use by all types of winegrowers, VineRobot is being beta tested on 80 acres in the Garonne Valley in Southwest France at the Les Vignerons de Buzet Societe Cooperative Agricole. Its developers include Burgundy- based inventor Christophe Millot, creator of WALL-YE, who specializes in the development of pattern recog- for the robot received the 2015 ITSC Select Paper Award by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers," he says. Although Tardaguila was non- committal about the price of the robot, he expects it will be reason- able, given the unit doesn't require complex training to operate and only needs simple maintenance. By comparison, Millot's vineyard robot WALL-YE, which has been in devel- opment since 2010, has a price tag of $32,000. WALL-YE employs six cameras and two arms that execute a rich set of functions, including the ability to de-sucker, prune and mon- itor soil and vine health. Millot has made security a priority, building in systems that lock out unauthor- ized use and destroy the robot's hard drive in dangerous situations. WALL-YE was demonstrated for the first time in the United States at the 2014 Precision Farming Expo in McMinnville, Ore., but there are no indications that the robot is in com- mercial use. Given their huge potential, it's not surprising that drones and robotics are getting a lot of atten- tion in the media and from the investment industry. Investment into drones and robotics startups in the United States increased 237% to $389 million in 2015. The Asso- ciation for Unmanned Vehicle Sys- tems International predicts 80% of drones will be used for agriculture in the near future, although some industry experts have called their efficacy into question. California companies, including drone devel- oper 3D Robotics and Blue River Technologies, a startup using com- puter vision and machine learning to weed crops, attracted invest- ment from a mix of agtech venture capital firms and high-profile Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Deborah Parker Wong is the Northern California editor for The Tasting Panel magazine, and a long- time contributor to Vineyard & Win- ery Management. She earned her WSET Diploma in 2009. Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com nition (GisMapTrace) and mapping software (GisMap). Billed as faster than manual monitoring and more cost effec- tive than scouting with drones or planes, the first commercial version of VineRobot will use chlorophyll- based fluorescence to assess the nitrogen content in leaves and mea- sure vegetative growth. Another complex sensor that combines fluo- rescence and RGB machine vision measures the anthocyanin content and composition of berries. Devel- opers are planning to include water status and yield assessment sen- sors in future generations. "This on-the-go and noninvasive technology will provide insight into the heterogeneity and the state of the vineyard and is expected to replace some lab chemical analy- sis," says Tardaguila. According to Tardaguila, VineRo- bot works autonomously at three speeds — from 1.5 to 5 km (0.9 to 3.1 miles) — gathering information about the vineyard and generating the data as simple maps that can be read on a tablet, computer or smart- phone. Using this highly accurate data, winegrowers can make key decisions about vineyard inputs and picking decisions that will influence both yield and quality of the wine. "The navigation strategy developed VineRobot is a multi-sensor scouting robot currently being tested in the Garonne Valley in Southwest France.