Robotic Grape Inspection and Selective Harvesting in Vineyards: A Multisensory Robotic System With Advanced Cognitive Capabilities

Abstract

Driven by the increasing food demand and the need for higher-quality cultivation, precision agriculture grows steadily during the last decade. It involves the application of mobile robots and intelligent robotic technologies in various agricultural field tasks, concerning a variety of crop types. Aiming at compensating for the lack of selective robotic harvesting solutions regarding the high-value crop of grapes, the EU-funded project BACCHUS (<uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/871704</uri> and <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://bacchus-project.eu/</uri>) develops an intelligent mobile robotic system, comprising two independent and cooperative robots: one for the grape inspection and collection of valuable data regarding their maturity level, and one for the bimanual harvesting of grapes in a human-inspired manner. Validated via real-field trials, the proposed autonomous system pushes forward the precision agriculture application for a particularly sensitive crop type in the challenging and heavily cluttered environment of vineyards, facilitating the selective harvesting of high-quality grapes.