Human vs. Teleoperated Robots in Vineyard Management: A Simulation-Based Analysis of Travel Speed, Routing, and Task Performance

Abstract

Rising labor costs and narrow treatment windows have made teleoperated robots a proposed tool for vineyard scouting and treatment, but simulation-based comparisons of human and robotic performance are sensitive to modeling choices that can favor one agent before any trial runs: whether both can record a target's location, whether both are routed efficiently, and whether travel speeds are assessed consistently. This paper simulates a human operator against a teleoperated robot on two vineyard tasks, disease detection-and-treatment and yield-zone survey, holding both agents to matched location-marking and routing standards, using a routing strategy proven optimal for this topology, and modeling teleoperation-specific effects. Once information access and routing are held equal, task-time outcomes are governed largely by relative sustained travel speed: at the speeds modeled (1.4 m/s human, 0.9 m/s UGV), the human completes both tasks 43-48 percent faster, a gap persisting across a simulated eight-cycle season, while at speed parity the agents differ by only 9-12 percent, and every other parameter shifts the result by under 4 points. These results indicate the comparison is primarily a question of platform speed, and that the case for teleoperated robots should rest on labor availability, endurance, consistency, or hazard avoidance rather than completion time.