Vitacress has helped sponsor a series of educational workshops on how robotics can be applied to both horticulture and agriculture.
The Growbotics workshops, attended by a group of 16-year-old students, were carried out as part of a public engagement course called Collaborate and Engage run by King’s College London with Science Gallery London.
Growbotics was one of the selected projects from a competition to win a grant for a public engagement activity.
During the workshops, the students were challenged with automating a vertical farm made from Lego. Working together, one group automated the vertical farm crane to pick up Lego plants from shelves, while the other arranged plants in a Lego yard.
The completed Vertical Lego Farm will form part of an interactive public exhibition organised by Kings College London on Horticultural and Agricultural Robotics this autumn.
The Growbotics workshops were devised and organised by Aran Sena of King’s College, whose work is funded by a PhD studentship awarded by the AHDB.
Sena said: “I am passionate about the benefits that robotics can offer horticulture and agriculture and wanted to share this with students who are considering their career and further education options.
'Vitacress has been a big advocate of our research into robotics and horticulture here at Kings College, so they were a natural sponsor for the Growbotics workshops.”
Chris Moncrieff, production director at Vitacress Herbs, arranged the sponsorship. He added: “Robotics and automation have an increasingly significant role to play in horticulture and agriculture which is why I think the research they are doing at Kings is so important.”
