VitiBot

VitiBot is an agricultural robotics company headquartered in Reims, in the Champagne wine-growing region of northeastern France, founded in 2016 by Dominique Bache, a winegrower, and Cedric Bache, a robotics engineer. The company was established to develop field-ready autonomous machinery specifically designed for vineyard operations, where conventional agricultural robots face challenges posed by narrow inter-row spacing, sloped and irregular terrain, and the need for precise tool placement near fragile vines. VitiBot's commercial development built on an earlier internal proof-of-concept project called Hector, which validated the technical feasibility and agronomic relevance of autonomous viticultural equipment before the company was formally incorporated and funded.

The company's flagship product is the Bakus, a fully electric autonomous straddle robot designed to travel between vine rows while carrying interchangeable modular tool attachments for tasks including mechanical weeding, inter-row mowing, and vine base trimming. The robot is equipped with two RTK GPS modules that deliver positioning accuracy of less than one centimeter, enabling precise tool placement within vine rows at standard vineyard row spacings. The Bakus achieves up to fourteen hours of battery operation per charge cycle, with a recharge time of approximately six hours, and is monitored and controlled through a dedicated mobile application. VitiBot completed its first working Bakus prototype in September 2017 and booked its first commercial sale in 2019, with subsequent deployment across French wine regions including Burgundy, Champagne, Occitanie, and Touraine.

The Bakus platform is particularly relevant for organic viticulture, where regulatory restrictions on herbicide use make mechanical weeding a mandatory and labor-intensive requirement for growers seeking certification. The robot's reported operating cost of less than one euro per hour makes it an economically attractive alternative to tractor-based mechanical cultivation, especially for smaller estate wineries. European agricultural equipment manufacturer SAME Deutz-Fahr (SDF Group) subsequently acquired a majority stake in VitiBot, providing the company with access to manufacturing scale and SDF Group's international distribution infrastructure to support commercial expansion into additional wine-producing regions.