Note-taking for viticulturists made easy
An intelligent-viticulture project for orderly farmers and tidy farms
Introduction
The idea was born in the frame of ATHENA Language and Speech Processing Institute’s project AGRO4+ when our team tried to simplify the sophisticated work of viticulture.
Note-taking in this field is extremely important as each vineyard has its own micro-climatic conditions and general best practices don’t always pose a solution. Traditional note-taking though can result to messy notepads and piles of dusty pages and also during the on-field work can be tricky, as, good and clean notebooks don’t go on well with muddy fields. This is where speech-to-text emerged to save the day.
The app and its usage
The general concept is to simplify things as far as possible. Keeping that in mind we designed an Android app (already available for beta testing via Play Store), being the on-field note-taking tool and a web app, being the data analysis and review tool (Do not hesitate to sign up to try it out and do let us know if you want to also send you the app for beta-testing). The usage of the app requires the division of the vineyard in sectors that will be different entities regarding the note-taking process, or the treatment of the whole vineyard as a single sector.
The viticulturist while inspecting each sector can take vocal notes on the easiest possible way in the only-two-screens Android app by selecting each sector inside the app. The selection can be done manually or by scanning NFC chips placed inside the vineyard that trigger automatically the recording for the specific sector. The latter can be useful on the field since dirty hands, rain, or working gloves can make manual input of data on the mobile phone quite difficult.
Upon returning home and preparing a nice cup of coffee, the agriculturist, can access the web app and review all the recorded notes. The user has the option to correct possible errors of the text-to-speech processing and review the history of the notes taken in a very simple browsing menu. Vineyards can be accessed by navigating to their locations on a map screen built using the google maps API. Each sector is then graphically represented then inside the vineyard menu with all the inspections performed listed in chronological order. The web app also offers the possibility of text-searching in the notes taken during any vineyard inspection.
What is to come
Note-analysis
Having created all the technology needed for storing the vocal notes of the farmer as text in our database gives us the capability, if not the obligation, to create a speech-to-text question and answer tool.
-How many kilos of grapes have you picked from sector A1?
That can turn speech to quantitative data and store it in appropriate table entries. The data can then be analyzed and visualized so that note-taking app is upgraded to note-taking-and-analyzing app.
Winery inspection
Not a lot to be said here, all can be made easier by extending the app to also cover the secondary stage of production. Imagine a feature where the user will be able to scan the NFC on every barrel and answer to questions tailored for the wine-making process. What can be better than having visualized data offered by the application that can be used as a library of detailed hands-on experience for forming best practice techniques that fit the regional demands.
