The Barracuda: A Novel Cutting Mechanism for Pruning Canes Wrapped around Wires

This paper presents the design and evaluation of the Barracuda, a novel pruning tool for robotic automation to cut grapevine canes tightly wrapped around wires. The Barracuda’s anvil has specially designed grooves that allow the wire to move passively out of the way while the blade completes the cut on the cane. The intention is to enable a robotic cane pruning platform to prune canes on wires without precise positioning of the device or manipulation of the wires. The device was extensively tested in real-world commercial vineyards to evaluate how effectively it can produce clean cuts suitable for pruning. Cutting performance showed a successful cut rate of 94.5% with negligible wire damage on over 300 cuts. Evaluations on the robotic platform showed it could successfully prune 71.1% of canes while utilising this design.