Oenobotics Project

Enabling sustainable oenological practices through a robotic UAS solution for precision viticulture

What is the aim of Oenobotics?

Oenobotics services will be delivered to customers such as vineyard farmers or associations. It will use a hardware-as-a-service business model, supporting viticulture farmers to avoid significant initial investment costs. The Oenobotics hardware and software will also be available to drone companies and interested farmers as an off-the-shelf product. The solution addresses the needs of wine-producing vineyards located in remote sloppy elevated locations that are hard to reach with any machinery.

In particular, the Oenobotics project deploys a droned platform that will provide viticulture farmers the following innovative and affordable precision viticulture services:

1. Vine disease diagnostics.
2. Vine water-stress diagnostics.
   
3. Precise spot-spraying for treatment of downy mildew, powdery mildew and grey mould/botrytis.
4. A wireless and automated drone charging dock.
   

What will Future Needs coordinate?

Future Needs Management Consulting will coordinate the Minimum Viable Product definition and the service design in the Oenobotics project. Additionally, Future Needs will coordinate the trials, the user-validation and the fine-tuning of the system. Initially Future Needs will provide a description of all the services and the system technical requirements and mockups of the final product and will draw the services. When the system is built, test drone flights over Kontogiannis Family vineyards with known health state will take place. They will diagnose correctly the plants health state (disease and water-stress diagnosis) and they will spray precisely a liquid (water or a specific biological mix approved by the user) in selected areas. Finally they will automatically return to and land on the docking station to recharge.

How will Oenobotics help vineyard owners & workers?

These Oenobotics services will assist vineyards owners in avoiding health impacts of chemicals and heat on vineyard workers. What’s more, Oenobotics will help farmers to react much faster to extreme weather changes caused by climate change. Finally the project aims to assist farmers to be more sustainable and profitable by producing yield of better quality, using less pesticides (in case of conventional farming) and producing less CO2 emissions (in case of organic farming). Project results will be demonstrated in an organic vineyard in Greece.

Which activities will Future Needs lead?

Future Needs is the leader of all the market related activities of the undertaking in the Oenobotics project. These include IPR Management and GDPR, the creation of the product brand and associated promotional material. Also, the organisation of two promotional events in collaboration with DIHs and the marketing campaign for early adoption and ecosystem building. Additionally Future Needs will make a business and financial plan and a preparation for the market entry, to ensure the financial sustainability of the undertaking. Finally, Future Needs will establish an expansion strategy in order to define the means for developing scalable user-centred services and will create organizational plans (structure, processes) for the new venture that will drive the Oenobotics solution into the market.