Maaratech newsletter – Issue 3 – March 2021
The challenges of 2020 are not yet behind us, as a sudden Auckland lockdown forced a quick change of plan for our strategy meeting in Christchurch. However, this summer has been productive, and you can read all about it in our third newsletter...
New Zealand success at International Robot Olympiad 2020
Following lots of rescheduling in 2020, the New Zealand Robot Olympiad took place in December 2020, allowing teams to qualify for the International Robot Olympiad (IRO) which took place in January 2021. 50 students were selected to represent New Zealand at the...
Virtual reality viticulture
The work of our Part IV student, Mitchell Faulconridge, (under supervision of Henry Williams) has been featured on Uniservices Insights. This is part of our Maaratech research programme, and Mitchell has been working on Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) tools to...
Congratulations Dr Nejati!
Hot off the press: Mahla Nejati has successfully completed her PhD oral defence for her project “Developing the vision system of an orchard robot“. Congratulations Dr Nejati! You can read more about Mahla’s PhD work in this article. Mahla will...
Maaratech newsletter – Issue 2 – December 2020
After a very unusual year, the whole team have been very busy ensuring that our work can still go ahead as planned. Read all about it in December’s newsletter...
New Dexterity wins international prize at Hackaday
The New Dexterity Group won the Assistive Devices open challenge of the 2020 Hackaday Prize with their wearable, soft robotic exoskeleton gloves! The Hackaday Prize is an international competition organized by SupplyFrame and sponsored by many organizations,...
Robotics to help with fruit picker shortage
Professor Bruce MacDonald talks to RNZ around improved technologies to help solve the seasonal worker shortage in NZ’s horticultural sector. Listen to the episode of RNZ podcast: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/podcast-card/fruit-picking-squeeze...
EurAgEng Outstanding Paper Award 2020 – short listed paper
Congratulations to our Multipurpose Orchard Robotics Team! Our recent paper: Robotic kiwifruit harvesting using machine vision, convolutional neural networks, and robotic arms, (submitted to Biosystems Engineering) has been shortlisted for consideration for a EurAgEng...
Enginuity Day 2020 – inspiring our future women engineers!
Enginuity Day, an annual event hosted by the Faculty of Engineering celebrates, motivates, and inspires our future women engineers. Girls from high school were invited to hear about, learn, and try engineering activities. Our robotics team led by Henry Williams, Jamie...
A fruitful partnership with Robotics Plus
Over the last 6+ years, CARES has partnered with Robotics Plus to develop robotics technologies for orchards. Our collaboration on project Multipurpose Orchard Robotics, developed new orchard automation technology for pollination and harvesting services...