Engineering students from Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Electronic & Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and General Engineering have made it to the final of the Engineers in Business Competition (EIBC) Awards with their innovative take on precision agriculture that uses swarm robotics to collect data and make crop management more effective and efficient.
Team Seedsense is led by Anas Nazha, an MEng student of Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering and he will lead a team of four as they compete against nine other university teams to win the prestigious award, a share of £10,000 and business mentoring from a Sainsbury Management fellow.
Taking place online on Monday 26 October the ceremony includes a live ‘Dragon’s Den’ style competition. Compered by TV presenter and engineer, Kate Bellingham, Seedsense will have just six minutes to convince the judges, through a presentation and Q&A, that they should be crowned Champion of Champions and take home a £3,000 Big Ideas Award.
Amongst other criteria, the judges will be assessing just how much of an impact Seedsense could have on its target market and how it might solve real-world problems and challenges experienced by farm owners and agricultural workers.
The other three team members taking part are Aiman Bin Shahizam, an Electronic and Electrical Engineering student, Conor Cullen, an MEng in Aerospace Engineering student; Jack Maskell, a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science student; and Kane Dervan, a MEng in General Engineering student.
Team-mate Jack Maskell, who grew up around farming, said: “I was always surprised at the inefficient way that crops are sprayed. Spraying pesticides and herbicides uniformly wastes money, damages the environment and has a negative impact on crop health. A solution to this problem benefits farmers, the environment and also increases crop yields, making agriculture more profitable and more sustainable.”
Conner Cullen, also on the team, added: “Our idea was inspired by the concept of swarm robots and the fact that lots of small inexpensive robots, if working together, can achieve a much larger task. However, our first concept of just land rovers wasn’t able to give us the detail in the soil health that we required so we researched and included the idea of the biodegradable seed sensors.”
SeedSense is gearing up to pitch on Monday 26 October 2020 and to watch the team present live online please register here.
Listen to Anas on BBC Radio Sheffield (1:12 onwards)
Seedsense: Using swarm robotics to enhance precision agriculture
This innovation from the Seedsense Team would use existing technologies such as biodegradable seed sensors, land robots and weather stations to collect valuable information about farmland. This information will take the shape of vegetation maps, soil and crop health, precise weather and the potential to expand on more variables if needed, helping farmers manage their crops more effectively. Seedsense will analyse the land, calculate the required equipment and plant eco-friendly seeds to record soil data, which can then be collected by land robots and sent online for analysis by weather stations. Seedsense will retain ownership and responsibility for the equipment, offering landowners a low risk, low-cost, subscription-based service to help farmers better manage their crops.
EIBC Awards
The EIBC supports and promotes the idea of a combined engineering and business education and provides prize funding to universities to help them encourage more engineers and technology students/graduates to get involved in innovation and entrepreneurship. In a world that is moving and developing so rapidly, these skills are vital to help tackle challenging global problems and to improve our lives.