Bringing Motion Control to the Vineyard: Precision Farming in Action

At Cornell’s Lake Erie Research and Extension Lab, Dr. Terry Bates is transforming grape growing through motion control and robotics. As part of the Efficient Vineyard Project, his team is automating tractors and deploying robotic tool carriers that can navigate vineyard rows, perform targeted tasks, and adjust operations on the fly. By combining environmental sensing with variable-rate technology, these smart machines bring precision, efficiency, and autonomy to viticulture—putting motion control at the heart of modern vineyard management.

“There is a lot of environmental variation on a farm,” said Terry Bates  , director of CLEREL. “But it used to be you’d set machines at a particular rate and just go, a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. We’ve started to get into precision viticulture, using ag sensors, soil sensors and canopy sensors in order to spatially map the variability in the vineyard.”