Robot and AI trialled in vineyards to detect costly disease

A new worker has joined the ranks this wine harvest in the form of a robot which, aided by artificial intelligence, is being used to detect a costly disease.

The pilot is the result of years of research and collaboration from companies in the sector. It has been designed to detect grapevine leafroll disease which doesn't kill vines but makes them have less fruit and poorer quality.

Plant & Food Research senior scientist Vaughn Bell said the new technology would be far more efficient than workers looking for the disease. "For a trained assessor it's easy to see. For a novice it can be very difficult."

The robot was working in a St Clair Family Estate vineyard today, as was Bell who was looking for the disease manually. "My dataset that I collect will be compared to what the robotics will identify and ideally the two will align very closely."

The robot is remotely controlled and can travel up to 9km/h. Using the cameras on board, the vines are videoed and artificial intelligence is used to identify the disease.

Integrape's Joris Besamusca said it's the result of each company doing what they're good at. "It's taken a couple of years and we've been doing some testing in the fields and we've brought in some of our partners that we work with to try and scale out."

Agri Automation's Chris Clifford said the machines can be used for a variety of things, including moving equipment.

"With labour becoming an ever increasing issue not only the supply but also the cost, that's where a machine like the Burro is a force multiplier, can reduce the number of people required to get a task done."

Once the data is collected it also has to be collated and made easily understandable. The technology used here will mean it's easy to find where the disease is on a map, rather than having to go up and down rows.

Saint Clair Family Estate's Jarrah Prior said he hopes it will turn low value jobs into high value ones. "That's going to come with training for our staff, but I think the opportunity is there.

"I think we are just scratching the surface with this tech. We are just looking at one vineyard but we have thirty others and we are just one producer out of 100s, so the scalability is amazing."