Team Prodigies from the Manufacturing Technology Centre won this year’s Home Automation Challenge with its automated irrigation system.

The judges said they were impressed by the high level of creativity and technical skill required to design and manufacture the product.

The competition, run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (www.imech.org), challenges apprentices to use their ingenuity to create or improve a device to make life at home or gardening easier.

The judges said they were impressed by the fact that the irrigation system was created to solve a specific problem, as the apprentices had seen their grandparents struggling to lift watering cans to water their hanging baskets.

Team Prodigies also won the Peer Review Award.

Team Praemium from aerospace company Leonardo was highly commended for its Activ-Eat device, which gives the user the opportunity to earn rewards through a dispenser by doing more exercise.

The prototype products were judged at the finals held on 12 July 2019 at the Manufacturing Technology Centre, Coventry.

Schoolchildren from Coventry schools also visited the competition and spoke to the teams, as part of an education programme to encourage more young people to consider engineering as a career.