‘Underground drone’ tests grain
With what has been a mixed harvest across the UK now mainly in the store, a new £250,000 project could mark a major step for ward in how bulk stores of grain are monitored to prevent spoilage and waste.
The government’ s Innovate UK initiative is backing technology start-up C rover Ltd which has developed the world’s first robot system for safely sampling grain bulk sat various depths – and will be testing this in conjunction with the A GR I-EPIC entre and East of Scotland Farmers(eosf).
Over the next 18 months, the grain robot will be trialled at the EOSF store in Perth shire and on farms around the UK.
“Post-harvest losses have serious financial impacts force real storage sites such as farms, grain merchants, millers and breweries,” said Lorenzo Conti, Crover’s managing director – who added that the importance of ensuring harvested grain wasn’ t wasted was set to grow with the growth in global population and the threats of climate change.
Describing the C rover robot as “an underground drone” he said: “Like a pla’s wings in air, or a boat’ s rotor in water, the patented technology behind our C rover robot allows it to
fluently‘ swim’ through bulk solids, likece reals and grains, monitoring their condition while they are still in storage and without leaving any grain unchecked.”
Robin Bar ron of E OS F said his organisation had a special interest in obtaining samples from silos and stores full of malting barley, to allow accurate testing of grain quality in a way which avoided any health and safety risks associated with clambering across large piles of grain.