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Tim Rensen from UC Vision and James Williams from NIWA were lucky enough to go to the NZ Seafood Sustainability and Innovation Awards ceremony in September 2025 at the Grand Hall at Parliament. The scallop survey team didn’t win the Operational Innovator award but it was amazing for them to be selected as a finalist and see their work being recognised in this way.
Beetroot Robot
Introducing our robots, Beetroot and Carrot! They can be recognised by their different coloured covers, plus different scanning bars. Beetroot has the purple cover and carrot of course is orange! The covers are to shield the industrial PCs from dust/rain. Our staff member Richie, vacuum formed them out of PETG plastic in the University of Canterbury Mechanical Engineering Department. The cases remain on during scanning.
We have been scanning the same rows at Waipara, to test Carrot out before orchard testing. Beetroot has two columns of 6 cameras, each column tilted inwards to hopefully have more poses targeting occluded objects, especially on grapevines. Carrot has a single long bar specifically for the tall, planar trees in orchards. They both have the same cameras, there’s just more separation between the Carrot cams and they’re positioned and posed linearly.
We took both robots out as we were testing some changes to the navigation system on Beetroot (plus just a general scan of the vineyard for data), and doing the first in-field test of Carrot.
Carrot, our latest platform, has a 2.2m long camera bar meaning we can capture data of taller crops such as the modern growing systems used for apples, cherries, peaches, and plums, as well as grape vines.
Apart from the camera bars and their support structures we are trying to keep all rovers standardised, so we can easily maintain them.
We have set rows that we typically track the progress of so we only scan approximately 4 rows per trip. However in future, we may have two rovers scanning at once if we scale up our operation to scan whole vineyards at speed!
Blenheim
Our robot Matilda was picked up from Blenheim a couple of weeks ago. She has been busy scanning vineyards in the Blenheim region as part of the Vineyard project. The scans provide imagery which is turned into 3D reconstructions of the vines. Our project is helping viticulturalists to track their grape yields. Currently this is done manually with a lot of errors.
Matt Mattar and Sam Heslip drove the robot back to Christchurch with a quick stop along the coastline to photograph Matilda which was named after Matt. She is now being reused with a robotic pruning arm. Haven’t decided on a new name for it yet…. MatildArm?
Our team now has five robots which can scan in parallel at different sites and the project is progressing well.
Arboriculture
The UC Vision team have been doing a lot of field tests recently of their drones with tools, mainly pruning trees. We have two tools, a pruner tool and a chainsaw which hangs below the drone and has a locking mechanism which holds on to the branch and then saws through the branch. Field trials have been very successful so far as can be seen from the videos.
Blenheim
On 28 May 2025 we held an Industry event for the Occlusion project up in Blenheim at the NZ Wine Centre. The event started with lunch and some presentations about our project. Speakers included Professor Richard Green from the University of Canterbury Computer Science department who is leading the project, Associate Professor Amber Parker from Lincoln University and Dr Damian Martin from Plant and Food.
The afternoon concluded with demonstrations of our new robot called “Beetroot” which has two camera bars attached instead of the usual single bar. The robot has two rows of cameras and flashes and have greatly improved our imagery and seeing behind the leaves to fruiting bodies.
We had many industry people turn up including several Blenheim vineyards represented and there was good interest in the new robot and the project in general. The 3D modelling demonstrated by Oliver Batchelor was very well received.
Field trips
The UC Vision team have been scanning vineyards in Waipara as part of the Occlusion project headed by Professor Richard Green. The last scan was done in April just before harvest. The aim of the project is to detect organs such as fruiting bodies hidden behind leaves, using computer vision to “see around the leaves.” For more information please visit our Occlusion project page.
Drones
On 10 June 2025 we had a Drone Industry Event at the Ilam Homestead with our researchers and industry. This event included talks by our key research teams, University of Canterbury Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering Departments, plus University of Auckland.
Our project has progressed in the past year. The University of Auckland has been doing testing on our new planetary hex drone up in Auckland. The University of Canterbury team have designed a chainsaw attachment for the drone which cuts branches by clamping on and a mini chainsaw slicing through the branch. Our regular pruner also has more accuracy.
Sam Schofield did an impressive demonstration of the chainsaw tool, plus pruner. Afterwards there were useful discussions with industry regarding the project. All in all, it was a very successful event.
Arboriculture
The UC Vision team successfully cut a 30mm dowel with a chainsaw attached to a drone. For more information on this research project: https://ucvision.org.nz/drones/
Aquaculture
The UC Vision team often have their office out in Tasman Bay, Nelson whilst scanning mussel ropes with an autonomous underwater ROV. The robot is lowered off the back of the boat and guided to the mussel ropes where it scans down the ropes and detects mussel sizes, health and any pests. It then comes back to the boat where it is lifted back onboard.
This research lead by Professor Richard Green will allow more frequent low-cost surveys. It will help minimise loss and optimise harvest timing.
See https://uwairobotics.co.nz for more details
Drones
Our UC Vision team plus the University of Auckland who visited UC, recently tested the planetary hex drone Prototype I as part of our drones with tools project. The drone was designed by the University of Auckland and built by SPS Automation. The idea was to make a drone that is very stable in extreme environments. There will be another future prototype once this one has been put through lots of tests.