Local University team win international robotics competition

Harper Adams university students came second in an international robotics competition.

The team, made of four MEng Agricultural Engineering students, entered the competition at the Field Robot Event in Gut Mariaburghausen in Habfurt, Germany.

The students to enter were Joe Allin, 23, Ali Taylor, 24, Tom Lindley, 23, and Josh Mathews, 23, who were all accompanied by the Head of off-road Vehicle design and Final Year senior tutor Dr Ianto Guy.

Dr Ianto said: “Most of the teams were from other universities. We had a relatively small team, the others had around 10-15 members so I was pleasantly surprised with how well the students did.

“Our team was quite unusual as the students were Agricultural Engineers while the other competitors were mostly on computer science or similar courses.”

The competition was made up of four elements, the first being a basic navigation task where robots had to be navigated down 10 rows of maize. The second part included instructions in which the team had to quickly programme and navigate their robot down the requested route.

The third task involved moving the robots to identify simulated weeds and spray them with little liquid. The final task was seed drilling.

Dr Ianto said: “I believe the Harper Adams team did well, as they went for a simplistic design which was created after carefully looking at the task specifications.”