- Title: Meet Frasky, the hands-on robot built to tend grapes in Italy's vineyards
- Date: 14th November 2025
- Summary: GENOA, ITALY (NOVEMBER 12, 2025) (Reuters) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DR MANUEL CATALANO, IIT ROBOTICIST, SAYING: "If we have this digital tool, this digital replica of the vineyard, we can activate, because the Frasky is the robot with the manipulation capabilities, selective actions that we can make individually on each grape. This means that, for example, we can monitor the
- Embargoed:
- Keywords: Frasky IIT Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Italian Institute of Technology Manuel Catalano vineyard robot
- Location: GENOA & BERGAMO, ITALY / WEST SUSSEX, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- City: GENOA & BERGAMO, ITALY / WEST SUSSEX, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
- Country: Italy
- Topics: Europe,Science
- Reuters ID: LVA004191413112025RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A robot designed to transform vineyard operations with its advanced autonomous capabilities is undergoing trials in Italy.
Called Frasky, it is designed to carry out a range of functions including monitoring grape clusters, manipulating plants, and applying spray treatments to the the fruit, all autonomously.
"Frasky is a robot that we intended to work in vineyards to do precision agricultural activities," Dr Manuel Catalano, a roboticist and researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) in Genoa, told Reuters.
"The basic idea is that we can digitalize our vineyards and we can have the idea and the location of every grape that is located in the vineyard," he said.
Frasky’s main goal is to address the challenges that the agricultural sector is facing, such as environmental sustainability and labour shortages, by combining robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).
"In vineyards the problem is not to just collect the grapes but also do action during the year to maintain the vineyards. This is an aspect that today is challenging for all who manage big vineyards because you need the people and you need expertise that are not easy to found. With this kind of solution we provide to the user and to people that work in the vineyards, a tool that can accompany them during all of the activities of the vineyards. In this way they can do multiple action in the same time," Catalano said.
Equipped with a robotic arm and integrated camera, Frasky offers precise environmental mapping and obstacle detection. Its modular design allows for customization, enabling farmers to adapt the robot for various tasks.
"On the top there is the manipulation system, an arm, an anthropomorphic arm, that is equipped with hands that can manipulate the grapes but also tools that you can configurate to have selective action on on the grape," Catalano said.
The project was a collaboration between the IIT and the agricultural stakeholders in the Bergamo region.
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