Low-Cost Ground Vision System for Non-invasive Plant Health Monitoring and Vineyard Water Management

Precision viticulture aims to optimise grape production, reduce operating costs, increase profitability, and improve sustainability of vineyard operations through using the data collected from various sensors. Digital camera is one of such sensors which is able to capture high-resolution images for vineyards. This paper describes a ground-based vision system, Vitibox, that cost-effectively captures geo-tagged imagery in vineyards. Compared to existing off-the-shelf image capture systems, Vitibox provides a flexible, low cost (both capital and operating), fast solution that can be tailored to a broad range of image capture missions. The whole device can be powered by a widely available power bank(s) and capture images continuously for more than four hours. Multiple prototypes have been tested intensively in vineyards during different growing seasons. Results proved that the final product can capture high resolution, valuable images that these images were successfully converted into key vine health and development indices. These indices can help growers making informed decisions to help more Australian wine growers stay ahead of with the changes in the environment and climate.