The General Objective of the ROBOTRIM III Project is to design, manufacture and build a mobile robot to carry out pruning work for the vineyard that must incorporate different sensors and actuators to facilitate its autonomous use and its interaction with the environment. One of the fundamental tasks will be the redesign and programming of the new algorithms for the mobile robot, as well as the study to incorporate the autonomous navigation system and an electrical power system.
90% of the Spanish vineyard (and possibly worldwide) is formed in a cordon (unilateral or bilateral), so that there are perfectly marked and identified pruning thumbs. The pruner performs the pruning of these thumbs repeatedly and always following the same guidelines. This winter pruning is carried out between the months of November and February, so there are many months to carry out this operation.
During the espergura or pruning in green, the operations are equally repetitive; the shoots that have come out of buds not left in pruning are cleaned; therefore, a priori, it is also easily programmable.
Our purpose in ROBOTRIM III is to combine various technologies to provide vineyard-producing farmers with a robot that implements all technologies, suitable for all types of crops at the lowest possible cost. All this can be done in the same modular machine that allows different configurations depending on its desired functionality, and maintaining the motor part in a standardized way.
Within the framework of the project, the development of new solutions, services and products around mobility will be promoted in all types of agricultural machinery (seeders, sprayers, "weeding" machines, machines for soil preparation and conservation, for freight transport, etc.). Emphasis will be placed on digital and sustainable solutions; in promoting advanced autonomous functionalities and machine-machine and machine-environment connectivity; and in projects that affect sustainability and that contribute to the reduction of emissions, increase safety and efficiency. Likewise, in a very tertiary way, 5G infrastructures, connectivity solutions, as well as infrastructures that facilitate vehicle-environment connectivity will be explored.
