May 27, 2019
Robots a winner for Māori company
Māori-owned agritech start-up Robotics Plus won the Most Innovative Hi-Tech Agritech Solution at this year’s New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards as well as collecting the Callaghan Innovation-sponsored Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau tohu.
Owner and chair Steve Saunders says as the global population grows towards 10 billion, finding enough people to pick and process food has become a problem.
Callaghan Māori business and relationships manager Vincent Campbell says Robotics Plus has stepped up to the challenge with a mix of automation, robotics and sensing technologies.
"They've developed robots that pick fruit, they sort it and they pack it,. You can't get enough poeple at the moment to do that work, so they are looking at that opportunity," Mr Campbell says.
The company has also developed sensors that are being used to automate forest harvesting.
The other finalists for this year’s Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau award were:
– Healthcare Applications for their Emergency Q app which gives real-time information on wait times, fees and distances to local clinics, to help reduce congestion and delays in Emergency Department waiting rooms;
– Augmented Reality Applications (ARA) for their augmented reality wayfinding technologies designed to connect people to cultural stories about Aotearoa’s land, mountains, rivers and real iwi stories
– Takiwā for their technology platform which enables timely collation, analysis and presentation of vital data to help District Health Boards, iwi and educators to make better, more informed decisions.
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