Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Winegrid (Fiber optic sensor for real time analytics of the critical parameters for vinification)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-07-01 do 2022-03-31
Vinification is the process of turning grapes into wine. During vinification, to produce quality wine, it is critically important to monitor certain parameters - density, turbidity, colour, level, temperature and alcohol content. However, today such monitoring is time and labour intensive, requiring expensive investments in advanced equipment and high skilled personnel. The high labour costs greatly increases the overall expenses of wine making in Europe. The manual, sparse and timed collection of data also means that the data gathered can neither be used for real time corrective actions nor can be integrated with AI tools which can provide forecasting capabilities. The data from present processes lack the velocity required for “precision oenology". Technology of this magnitude will allow for further applications after wine, such as water and other critical liquids essential to day to day life. During the project, Watgrid will review and upgrade the sensor units to increase the operational range and develop software tools, design and engineer the production line. From a strategic prospective, the company will develop its commercial channels and file additional IP.
To date watgrid has successfully performed the internal review of the specifications. Subsequently, the density and alcohol sensors have been updated and the sensors upgraded, however not miniaturized. The software interface of the platform has been scaled up to handle additional units and the AI tool has been integrated to the dashboard. Control unit development is ongoing. The in house assembly line has been scaled up to produce up to produce 50 tank sensor units and 100 barrel sensors per week.
In recent years, intensified global competition has placed severe pressure on the European wine producers to reduce costs, operate more efficiently and improve the quality of wine. While many processes such as harvesting, vineyard management, bottling and labelling have been mechanised/digitised, the process of monitoring of wine production is still largely manual and offline. To address this, the industry is looking for a scalable solutions which can perform automated real-time multi-parameter monitoring of wine making. The technological advancements in the field of fibre optic sensors and the IoT revolution made Winegrid possible. The fibre optic sensors now are cost effective, compact and commercially available. The improved communication technologies and ease of implementation of IoT allowed for the integration of fibre optic sensors into a product like Winegrid. Within the context of Industry 4.0 many businesses are adopting Internet of things and cloud computing to automate various processes of manufacturing and implement data driven forecasting. Supported by the decreasing cost of sensors coupled with increased communication speeds and computing power, the data collection and analytics are now a much more viable and detailed option even for small enterprises. Winegrid is taking these technological advances to wine industry and aspiring to be the leader in providing solutions to the budding field of precision oenology.