Introduction

Wine-making is a messy process. Thousands of grapes must be crushed in a winery using heavy machinery to create wine. Through this process, grape debris, including grape stems, juice, and skins, can fall onto the floor and create a messy and sticky environment. Currently, this mess is cleaned by using a high powered hose to spray the debris down a drain because it is the easiest and most monetarily ecient way to do so. This process, however, wastes a signicant amount of water which is costly to the environment. Although water is used in other parts of the wine-making process, cleaning takes up a signicant percentage of the total usage and increases the ratio of water volume to wine volume to 6 to 1.

To reduce the environmental impact that wine-making has, the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology tasked our senior design group to design an automated robot that could reduce water usage in the cleanup process. This robot, also known as theWEINbot, would pick up grape waste using a minimal amount of water while also requiring a minimal amount of human interaction. Uniquely for our team, the mechanical components of the WEINbot were manufactured and assembled the previous year. This solved the problem of how to clean up grape waste while using a minimal amount of water. The previous year’s team, however, ran out of time and was unable to successfully develop a software that enables full automation.

The scope of our project involves developing a mapping and localization system for the WEINbot so that its operation can become fully automated. This means that we will assume that the previous year’s WEINbot perfectly picks up grape waste and that it solves the problem of water usage. Using the mechanical structure and steering layout provided by the already designed robot, our goal is to design a fully automated robot that can best meet more of the sponsor needs listed in Table 1 Since our project focuses on the automation of the WEINbot prototype, some of the sponsor’s needs will not be addressed by this project.The table of needs shown above was generated through discussion with our sponsor. Each need is scored based on its importance to the overall project with one star being the most important and three stars being the least importance. The table is on Preliminary Design Report.