Grape Vineyard Case Study Help
Business and Stakeholder Needs and Requirements: A Case of Grape Vineyard
Introduction
Robots appeal to several industries in today’s industrial environment as they help in easing labor concerns. The workforce is not easily available in some industries making the costs too high for companies to bear (Bachche, 2015; Nilawar, 2018). Moreover, their potential and efficiency of the work output remains limited. Thus robots are being introduced in the fieldwork in different industries including agriculture as labor issues are being experienced in different countries. Artificial intelligence, robots and job automation will alleviate companies to increase work precision, provide better solutions as per farming standards and solve labor concerns (Re2 Inc., 2018). This paper assesses the Business and Stakeholder Needs and Requirements of a table grape vineyard firm based in rural Victoria which is planning to expand but faces a lot of labor issues.
Mission Statement
This project aims to produce a prototype of a harvesting and covering robot with recognition, picking and moving system that will identify size and position of the grapes, pick them by grasping and cutting, and move it to the desired position in the table grape vineyard in rural Victoria. It will also erect supports for covering with plastics. The harvesting and covering robot would be an output and cost effective technology controlling the harvesting of the grape vineyard.
Stakeholders
This system involves several important stakeholders. These include:
- Farmers and labors working in vineyard: Although the new system will reduce the amount of labors and farmers working in the grape vineyard, they would be the one who would influence its development and carrying out the process smoothly. They will help in carrying out the harvesting and covering process. Hence, they shall know and fully understand how things are being carried out.
- The Company and its Engineers: They would keep a check on the proper functioning of robots and ensure its proper maintenance.
- Business Operations Personnel: The employees who would be managing the business shall understand the way it works and be updated timely to carry out other business activities.
- Government: The laws and regulations shall be properly followed by the vineyard and hence government shall intervene in case it gets against the prescribed laws to protect the people and society.
- The community: The people of rural Victoria might be impacted by the robots usage. Robots might disturb the people with its noise and lights at different times.
External Constraints
The external constraints that will affect the system are:
- Although legal requirements are always present, there is still a need of well-adapted regulatory framework in Australia at territory, state and federal level. Strong legal framework in the future including laws for robots and artificial intelligence, intellectual property law, employment law, airspace regulations and occupational health and safety can create issues for the firm to operate smoothly (Robotic Vision, 2018).
- Rural Victoria might have issues for getting internet and wireless connectivity easily.
- Harvesting and covering robots would help in harvesting and covering the grape vineyard, however, maintaining farmers, labors and engineers to look after will still be required which will have a high cost.
Goal and Objectives
The system must be able to:
- Recognize the size, orientation and position of the grapes
- Pick the grapes from the location by grasping and cutting them
- Able to transfer the fruits in the baggage
- Move inside the furrows or farm during harvesting operation
- Able to cover the vineyard with special plastics provided
- Distinguish easily the ripen and ripened grapes
- Stay operational for all over the day with minimal rest.
Operational Scenarios
During harvesting time, the robot shall be used. The robot will be given a command from the user to harvest vineyards of a particular area. The robot shall perform its first task with its recognition system where feedback sensors like revolvers, optical encoders, cameras, thermocouples and motion detectors are used to provide feedback to the control unit. The high-speed and multispectral camera along with the artificial lighting would capture image of the fruits which will then be transferred to the computer. The images would be processed by an algorithm based on color specification models and particular feature attributes. This image processing system would provide the length and vertical angle of fruit stem. This location will help the picking system to target the fruit whereas the orientation will help in determining grasping and cutting points. Detection and locating the fruits are based on characteristics like size, shape, color and edges. For picking the fruits, visual sensors and pneumatic gripper systems shall be used as it helps better grasping abilities with low damages. The sensors help in locating the peduncle and the pneumatic gripper cuts peduncle.
A bagging system would accompany to cover the cluster, grasp, cut and finally transfer the grapes into the container. The moving system is the third unit in which the sub-unit of the robot that is programmed moves in the furrows or inside the farm when harvesting is done in greenhouses. Apart from this, at the time of covering the vineyard in winters to protect it from climatic changes, the robot shall also perform the covering of grapes vineyard. It will also erect the plastic cover on to the plants. The plastic cover and vine canopy rests on GI wire and no other supporting pipes with cement concrete are used. This will protect it from rains, frost and hailstorms. Moreover, it will adjust the temperature and maintain warmer condition as required by the plants.
Validation Criteria
The robot shall basically meet four main criteria, i.e. recognizing, picking, moving and covering of the grape vineyard. To validate the prototype against these criteria, following tests will be used:
Location Identification: A human observer will check the accuracy of the target identified by the robot. Moreover, the orientation and color, size and shape would also be observed if the robot has identified it properly.
Picking Performance: It would also be checked by a human observer that the robots picks the matured fruits and do not damage the fruits by its gripping them hard.
Moving Performance: It will be checked if the robots moves smoothly and does not destroy the plants, seeds, soil or the furrows.
Covering system: To test the covering system, the robot would be placed between the two plants giving it a plastic. Once the covering sub-system is activated, it will have to cover the plant with the plastic accurately so that the plant is not damaged.
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Grape Vineyard Life Cycle Concepts
Pre-acquisition phase: This stage identifies the need of the harvesting and covering robot. Several factors both internally and externally would be checked. For instance, the feasibility of the robot, the legal requirements and standards needed, impact on the environment and the funds required are sufficient to meet or not. The concepts and theories used shall be detailed, their relevance for use and the way they will be achieved. A design of the robot can be asked by the company dealing in such works.
Acquisition phase: The full requirements would be discussed and a design in the form of prototype would be developed. The company contacted for the robot shall provide potential design and a working prototype at this stage. Upon confirmation from our ends when it meets our requirements, we shall purchase it.
Utilization phase: Once the robot is acquired, it will utilized by commanding them to harvest at the time harvesting. Also, when covering the vineyard would be required to protect from the weather, they would be given the command to do so. However, possible improvements shall be studied upon time to time and accordingly additions and subtractions would be done to improve it.
Retirement phase: When it will stop working for us, it will be removed from the vineyards and stripped into parts. As per the condition of the robot, it would either be sold back to the company it is purchased from or to prominent universities which can use it as a teaching tool.
