TEKEVER drones to detect vine disease
TEKEVER Group leads consortium that will fight a disease responsible for eliminating 250 hectares of vineyards in the north of Portugal and thousands in all Europe.
This project – called PARRA – is starting next spring with a budget of €1 million supported by European Commission structural funds.
Lisbon, 24 November 2015 – PARRA project aims to detect the early signs of flavescence doree disease, a relatively new vine illness that has no known cure, and, at same time, to reduce wine production costs.
‘Flavescence doree is what everybody talks about right now, but this project may help with other diseases, too’, said Ricardo Mendes, TEKEVER COO. “This project will develop automatic detection technologies of this disease in the vineyard, exploring different types of sensors that will be incorporated into TEKEVER’s unmanned systems.”
Collected data will be processed through a set of analysis and detection algorithms to be developed within the project. These algorithms will automatically analyse data and detect areas with high probability of incidence of Flavescence Dorée. Furthermore, these data and related processes are integrated in an operational management platform, which manages all data, organizes processes and generates reports.
“This project in the wine-growing region of Minho (north of Portugal) is a step forward for TEKEVER’s UAV in civil market. It’s great to think that, in the future, drones will provide a level of monitoring which will be as sensitive as the human touch.”
Project PARRA, lead by TEKEVER, aims at developing a set of technologies that contribute to increase the capacity to mitigate the effects of Flavescence Dorée (FD) in vineyards. The impacts of this disease are particularly intense, since the only measure available upon its detection are quarantine and removing the affected plants, with consequent economic effects. Large scale detection and early application of control measures are thus important tools in preventing the spread of this disease and minimizing its negative effects. In this context, project PARRA will develop technologies for automatic detection of this disease in vineyards, exploring different types of remote sensors in UAVs to enable faster detection at lower financial cost.
The project will develop an integrated solution reaching pre-industrial technological maturity level by the end of the project, thus allowing a fast transition to market after the end of the project. Complementing its operational objectives, the approach of project PARRA is based on the development of a set of capacities aiming at maximizing the impact of results and generating products and services of high added value, exploring both the national and international market. PARRA’s approach also ensures the development of a Scalable solution, both in terms of size and usage application by different stakeholders. The PARRA solution will be Expandable to new algorithms and future sensors, enabling continuous evolution, and Interoperable with different types of interfaces and technologies. Flexibility is another important characteristic of the platform to be developed, by making available a process management mechanism for operational activities which, depending on the stakeholder’s objectives, allows complimentary development of new capacities of data analysis (eg.: temporal and geographical series,, etc) as well as interfaces with already existing applications, to efficiently integrate these applications with PARRA.
The Group’s activities are organized in the Information Technology and the Aerospace Defense and Security Divisions.
The Information Technologies division focuses on improving the way organizations work and people live by providing them with ground breaking products that combine mobile technologies wireless communications location awareness distributed computing and artificial intelligence.
The Aerospace Defense and Security division contributes to the modernization and evolution of these markets by developing and delivering advanced technology and products that improve the quality of communication information and execution capabilities in organizations.
The technology and products created by these divisions have already resulted in several spin-offs and product lines.
TEKEVER’s growth is steadily sustained by a loyal and ever-growing customer base an extensive international partner network and an outstanding track record in research and development of innovative technology and high value products.
