An expert system for automatically pruning vines

摘要

Vine pruning is an important part of vineyard management,and pruning is the most expensive task in the vineyard whichhas not yet been automated. Every year, most new canesmust be removed from the vine, and the choice of canes toretain impacts vine yield. To automate the process of vinepruning, a vine pruning robot must make decisions on whatcanes to remove or to keep, based on a 3D topological modelof the structure of the vine. In this paper we present anArtificial Intelligence (AI) system for making these decisions,developed and evaluated using simulated vines. A viticultureexpert evaluated our approach by comparing it to pruningdecisions made by a pruner with a skill level typical of humanpruners. Our system successfully pruned 30% of vines betterthan the human and 89% at least as well. These resultsdemonstrate that the vine pruning problem is solvable usingcurrent computing technologies, and that automating thepruning process has the potential to improve vine qualityand yield.