Autonomous Vineyard Vehicles – What’s happening in Australia and around the world?

Many grape growers are facing labour shortages. Autonomous machinery has the potential to manage this issue and reduce production costs. A range of autonomous equipment is starting to come to market, including various autonomous robots, autonomy kits that can be retro-fitted to existing tractors, and natively autonomous tractors. This presentation will review options from around the world and discuss some of the challenges in adoption. It will include observations from our own work testing out a tractor autonomy-kit and an autonomous robot in Australian vineyards.

About Simon: 

Simon’s works focuses on the application of new technologies in vineyards and wineries. He has closely followed developments in both low CO2 emissions vehicles/fuels and autonomous vineyard machinery, including testing autonomous vehicles in vineyards in collaboration with wine industry partners.