Four engineering students from Harper Adams University (www.harper-adams.ac.uk) in Shropshire have won third prize in a Field Robot competition hosted by Slovenia’s Maribor University.

Entrants had to perform three tasks relating to navigation, advanced navigation and weed control; the three scores were then combined to give a final ranking. Alec Henderson, Jake Smith, Max Thorne and James Townley built Florence — on a relatively tight budget — from off-the-shelf sensors, drive-line components and microprocessors.

Mr Thorne said: “Having the opportunity to compete against other universities and professional teams from across Europe has been fantastic. The group initially had very little experience with robots, and we did a lot better than expected. I am looking forward to transferring the skills that this project has developed across into industry when I graduate.”

Mr Henderson said: “Our teamwork, knowledge and practical skills enabled us to beat more-experienced European university teams, who have been competing in this event for a number of years. We are pleased to have proven ourselves.”

The Field Robot event, now in its 12th year, is the world’s only open-air agricultural field robot contest. It champions the concept of robots working autonomously, carrying out tasks such as weeding, spraying and disease monitoring.