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Massey master’s student Hayden Wilson with Massey’s artificially intelligent farm assistant.
Massey University is living the ‘future of farming’ theme at National Fieldays this year with robots, future foods artificially intelligent farm assistants, and a focus on health and wellbeing.
This is the university’s first year as a partner of the Fieldays event overall, and its second year partnering in the health and wellbeing programme.
Massey’s stand in the main pavilion will display an artificially intelligent farm assistant.
The screen-based prototype will allow people visiting the stand to ask farm-related questions of an avatar. Voice recognition technology and pre-loaded farm data will enable the avatar to quickly analyse the question and put forward answers and solutions.
The stand will also have plant-based proteins, including soy patties that look and taste like meat, and bread made from nut and cricket flour.
Massey’s College of Health will have a stand in the Health Hub, where they will be asking crowds to play a spin-the-wheel style health promotion game designed to engage people in conversations about health and wellbeing.
It will cover different health topics including nutrition, exercise and social life, to expand people’s knowledge so they can better look after themselves and others.
Two Massey dietetic students will run a ‘sugary drink’ activity, where people can try different drinks, like flavoured waters, to find out more about sugar in drinks and the alternatives.
Massey knowhow will also feature on other sites.
The C-Dax stand (site F25) will show the C-Dax pasture meter robot developed with graduates from Massey University and representing the future of smart farming.
The robot uses pasture meter technology to measure pasture, autonomously allowing for its optimum use while saving labour costs. Massey mechatronics graduates Mitchell Hampton and Tim Sutcliffe, now working with C-Dax on the next stage of field trials, will front the display.
The robot has been entered in the Fieldays Innovation Awards.
On the Massey Agritech Research Centre stand the professor of robotics, Johan Potgieter, will talk about the future of farming.
This talk and networking event will be hosted by Massey’s Alumni Foundation on Thursday June 14 from 5.30pm at The Verandah.
Bedford truck
Massey’s first exhibit was brought up on a Bedford truck by a young Ralph Sims, now a Massey professor at the forefront of climate change issues.
In that truck, Professor Sims had farm machinery teaching equipment and a tent.
In 1975, Sims also started the tractor pull competition as a way to educate drivers about good driving to save fuel.
Farmer interest continues to grow as a Massey University research project to determine the benefits or otherwise of the self-shedding Wiltshire sheep is underway. The project is five years in and has two more years to go. It was done mainly in the light of low wool prices and the cost of shearing. Peter Burke recently went along to the annual field day held Massey's Riverside farm in the Wairarapa.
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