Vitibot

Vitibot’s Bakus S and Bakus L are electric straddle robots that drive autonomously over vine rows, carrying out soil work, spraying, and mowing without a human operator. Each unit carries a 75 kWh battery split across four lithium-ion packs, delivering roughly ten hours of continuous field time, with a fast charger restoring the battery to eighty percent in about two hours. A modular tool rail beneath the chassis accepts interchangeable implements for plowing, tilling, electric mowing, and confined spraying with recovery panels that capture the overspray and return it to the tank. Two RTK GPS receivers and eight time-of-flight infrared cameras guide the robot between rows as narrow as one meter, while twelve mechanical contact detectors trigger an immediate stop on impact. Because the machines run silently on electricity and operate unmanned, estates can schedule the physically demanding work of soil maintenance at night or on weekends without labor constraints, with an operator supervising via a smartphone app.

Growers buy the Bakus outright, bundled with a required annual beacon subscription that supplies RTK GPS positioning and live fleet monitoring from Vitibot's control center in Reims. This hybrid hardware-as-a-service structure ties recurring connectivity and support revenue to every unit in the field. For estates that want to trial before committing, Vitibot offers a hire-purchase option, and it sells directly to French CUMA cooperatives that pool ownership across multiple estates, splitting the capital cost while sharing the subscription. Every unit now ships with a five-year, 3,000-hour warranty.