Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Automation easing staff shortages
Day and night, fleets of driverless vehicles are mowing, mulching, cultivating, spraying weeds and plucking leaves in Pernod Ricard vineyards.
Autonomous Oxin can do up to three tasks in one pass of each row of vines, while capturing data in the company’s 13 Marlborough and two Hawke’s Bay vineyards. Four earlier versions of the high-tech machine, first built in 2018, are already being upgraded.
As trials with Pernod Ricard have gone successfully, the Blenheim-based company is now ready to build and trial Oxin with new customers, and recently sold a machine to an Australian company.
Canopy trimming is the latest task being added to four new vehicles rolling off Smart Machine’s production line. The company employs 20 people to programme, upgrade, maintain and develop new tasks for the self-driving machines.
An Oxin was on display, along with a Smart Sprayer developed and sold by BA Pumps & Sprayers, at a Pernod Ricard vineyard in Fairhall this month. The developers of both machines were working in partnership with the wine company. Pernod Ricard viticulture transformation manager David Allen said at the event that Oxins were offsetting the industry’s chronic staff shortages.
After photographing end posts, the machines could be programmed to navigate a vineyard’s rows. Four people with a tablet each operated 16 machines, and the ratio of machines to people was expected to increase.
Allen said he welcomed the addition of canopy thinning to the abilities of the four newest machines, fitted with light-detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors to avoid collisions with posts and wires. Reducing
the number of passes per row would free up time and resources for other tasks, he said.
Smart Machine was working on the next thing on Pernod Ricard’s wish list, a climate-friendly electric Oxin, with $622,360 of funding from the Ministry of Primary Industries Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund. A towable multi-row sprayer to apply chemicals to canopies was also being developed.
Smart Machine chief executive and product designer Andrew Kersely said each Oxin weighed 4.5 tonnes with a fully-laden 1000-litre tank and all implements
fitted. Running on tracks, not wheels, meant in theory less earth compaction than a person walking.
One challenge was ensuring the selfdrive machines did not run into people and objects, but were also not constantly stopping and starting.
The cost?
“Roughly $400,000, depending on variables included,” Kersely said, “offset by cost savings in overall fleet size and labour.”
Allen said the BA Smart Sprayer demonstrated in Fairhall cut chemical use by up to 35% of the typical volume and value
used by recycling sprayers that captured and returned surplus spray.
“It’s a pretty chunky saving,” Allen said. “We are very keen to reduce chemical use and efficiency.”
Sprayer arms had LiDAR sensors attached, which looked down rows, automatically opening nozzles where there was canopy, and closing them where there were gaps.
Pernod Ricard owned two three-row Smart Sprayers, which sprayed six canopies at a time, and two of the standard two-row sprayers, which treated four canopies at a time.