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On the 12th of June we held an industry day at Ilam Homestead to keep industry up to date with our research. We had several industry people attend with short talks by our researchers from the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Canterbury and also The University of Auckland.
We were very excited to be able to showcase our new drone design which has been built by SPS Automation based in Christchurch. Scott Spooner attended from SPS Automation and revealed the new planetary hex drone which had been initially designed by the University of Auckland with input from SPS who are now building it. The design includes central propellers with planetary propellers around the outside of this circular design.
Sam Schofield did a wonderful demonstration outside in the gardens of Ilam Homestead of our pruning tool on a drone which runs autonomously once a branch is manually selected by a user.
The Press came to feature our pruning drone and ran an article the next day which is available online to view.
All in all, the day was a great success and everyone was very interested to see the progress we have made since the project started.
The Press article can be viewed here.
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