At Euroflora 2025 the VINUM project: robotics and innovation for the viticulture of the future
During the international event Euroflora 2025, held in the regenerated spaces of Genoa’s Waterfront, the VINUM project was presented. It was developed within Spoke 3 of the RAISE ecosystem.
The initiative took place in a highly significant setting focused on biodiversity, sustainability, and enhancing the relationship between humans and nature, in line with the founding principles of the exhibition.
VINUM is the result of a collaboration between the Dynamic Legged Systems (DLS) unit of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Piacenza Campus.
Its main goal is the development of an advanced robotic solution for automating winter vine pruning, a crucial process for wine production quality, but one that is highly labor-intensive and requires specific skills.
Two events were dedicated to the project, held on April 24 and 27, and curated by Claudio Semini and Angelo Bratta, respectively coordinator and researcher of the IIT DLS unit. On both occasions, a live demonstration of the robot was offered, drawing significant interest from professionals and the general public.
The modular robotic system integrates a mechanical arm and a complex multi-modal artificial vision system – including stereoscopic vision – that enables precise vine recognition and autonomous cutting. A state machine drives the robot through its various operational phases, ensuring continuity and efficiency in the task.
Thanks to the use of technologies such as Detectron2 for image segmentation and visual odometry techniques for building point clouds, the robot is capable of “understanding” its environment and autonomously making decisions on the most suitable pruning points.
VINUM was also conceived to address the growing difficulty in finding skilled labor for complex agricultural tasks, offering a technological alternative that can support human intervention in the most demanding scenarios.
The prototype’s performance will be tested in the upcoming winter season directly in vineyards, with a comparative evaluation against manual pruning. The analysis will include factors such as cutting effectiveness, adaptability to different terrains, and the impact on the plant’s vegetative characteristics.
VINUM’s participation in Euroflora confirmed RAISE’s and its partners’ commitment to promoting cutting-edge technological solutions that can concretely contribute to the digital and sustainable transition of Italian agriculture.
