Matilda Robot – UCVision

Decommisioning Matilda

Our robot Matilda was picked up from Blenheim a couple of weeks ago. She has been busy scanning vineyards in the Blenheim region as part of the Vineyard project. The scans provide imagery which is turned into 3D reconstructions of the vines. Our project is helping viticulturalists to track their grape yields. Currently this is done manually with a lot of errors.

Matt Mattar and Sam Heslip drove the robot back to Christchurch with a quick stop along the coastline to photograph Matilda which was named after Matt. She is now being reused with a robotic pruning arm. Haven’t decided on a new name for it yet…. MatildArm?

Our team now has five robots which can scan in parallel at different sites and the project is progressing well.

Marlborough CIT Robotics and Automation Event

On 4 September 2024 the Marlborough District Council, hosted an event which was attended by 35 representatives from industry, research, tech, government and education. There were a lot of representatives from the wine industry. We sent a member of our UC Vision team Dr Oliver Batchelor who gave a presentation along with Jodie Kuntzch of Moananui.

The purpose of the event was to explore potential collaborations relating to robotics and automation.

Dr Oliver Batchelor gave a presentation on our workflow with scanning grapevines and showcased our technology in terms of crop monitoring through videos.

The government’s goal to double wine exports was highlighted however with increasing costs, especially labour, the profits were down. Break out groups were made to discuss this problem. The highest votes were for developing a new system framework which included “Design a new growing system where tasks and human input are reduced.”

It is clear from this event that automation using robots is the way forward in the vineyard.

Industry event for the Occlusion Project

On 14 February 2024 we held an event for the MBIE funded project, “Predicting the unseen: a new method for accurate yield estimation in viticulture/horticulture”, otherwise known as the Occlusion Project. The event was held at the NZ Wine Centre in Blenheim with talks on the project held in the theatre there and then a field trip to Constellation Vineyard to see our robot scanning the grapevines.

We had good industry engagement with lots of good discussion around what we are doing. The field trip was a great introduction to our robot ‘Matilda’ and camera bar. We hope to have this event yearly and invite more people next year as we build up a network of industry supporters.

Category: Matilda Robot

Decommisioning Matilda

Marlborough CIT Robotics and Automation Event

Industry event for the Occlusion Project